After a one-month break, I got back to my old haunts last weekend and was delighted to encounter -- by pure chance -- two "three-women" plays on Tokyo stages.
First, at Le Thea^tre Ginza, was American playwright Edward Albee's 1994 Pulitzer prizewinning "Three Tall Women," a two-act masterpiece directed here by Masaya Takahashi. This production is effectively "Three Tall Women: Take 2," as it follows a hit staging in 1996/97 of the same play at the same theater (then called the Ginza Saison Theater) for which the same leading actress, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, won both a Yomiuri drama award and a Mainichi arts award for her performance.
In the play's first act, we find three tall women of different ages gathered in the sumptuous bedroom of a mansion. The room's pink decor, flowery fabrics and heart-shaped cushions celebrate its occupant's very girlish taste. However, the woman we see sitting center-stage in her favorite chair and wearing a frilly chiffon nightie is no young damsel, but a 92-year-old widow (Kuroyanagi), attended by a middle-aged servant (Satomi Awachi) and a young woman from her lawyer's office (Ran Shindo), who are listening to her reminiscences.
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