News

Sailor Moon Stage Play Actress Suzuka Osawa No Longer With Tour After Injury

The public relations company for the North American tour of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live, a performance show based on Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon manga, confirmed with ANN on Monday that actress Suzuka Osawa is no longer part of the tour due to an injury.

The official website for the Sailor Moon franchise had stated on March 12 in a now-deleted post that Osawa would no longer be able to perform at some shows of the North American tour due to a leg injury. Though the announcement noted that her focus on recovering will only be for a "fixed time period," it did not note if or when Osawa will return to the stage.

Osawa was slated to be one of the play's "Dark Performers," who play Youma from the Dark Kingdom. Though the post about her injury has been deleted, posts made about the musical after March 12 no longer list her in the cast list. She is also no longer listed on the cast page on the tour's English website.

The North American tour dates for the performance include:

• March 12: Pittsburgh, PA — Byham Theater
• March 15: Austin, TX — Bass Concert Hall
• March 18: San Antonio, TX — Majestic Theater
• March 19: Sugarland, TX — Smart Financial Center
• March 22: Los Angeles, CA — The Music Center's Ahmanson Theatre
• March 25-26: Seattle, WA — Paramount Theater
• March 27: Spokane, WA — First Interstate Center
• March 29: Portland, OR — Keller Auditorium
• April 1: Dallas, TX — Winspear Opera House
• April 3: Midland, TX — Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center
• April 6: Minneapolis, MN — Orpheum Theater
• April 8: St. Louis, MO — The Fabulous Fox
• April 11: Dayton, OH — Schuster Center
• April 12: Columbus, OH — The Palace Theatre
• April 13: Louisville, KY — The Kentucky Center
• April 15: Chicago, IL — Chicago Theater
• April 16: Milwaukee, WI — Riverside Theater
• April 18: Newark, NJ — NJPAC
• April 19: Hartford, CT — The Bushnell
• April 22: Philadelphia, PA — Miller Theater
• April 24-26: New York — Palladium Times Square

Kaori Miura (The Prince of Tennis, Tokyo Revengers musicals) is the director and writer. Satomi Toma is the choreographer. Go Sakabe and KYOHEI are the composers.

The play is being performed in Japanese with English subtitles.

The play also had 23 performances in London between February 3-March 19.

The show debuted with a preview run at AiiA 2.5 Theater Tokyo from August-September 2018, before having performances at the Palais des congrès de Paris that November as part of the Japonismes 2018 event in Paris, France. The show then opened in Washington D.C. and New York in March 2019. It later opened in Taiwan in April 2023.

The Sailor Moon manga has been adapted for stage before, including a series of musicals that began with Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon -La Reconquista- in 2013 to celebrate the manga's 20th anniversary. The fourth of the stage musicals, Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon -Le Mouvement Final-, ran in Japan from September to October 2017. The musical's final performance in Osaka, screened in theaters in the United States in March 2018, and also screened in theaters in Canada that April.

The franchise got a stage musical starring members of the Nogizaka46 idol group. The musical ran at The Tennōzu Galaxy Theatre in Tokyo in June 2018, and again at the TBS Akasaka ACT Theater in Tokyo in September 2018. Live Viewing Japan streamed the musical in December 2021.

Thanks to Koriander Bullard for the news tip.

Sources: E-mail correspondence, Sailor Moon franchise's website (via Internet Archive Wayback Machine)