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Impressions: Spreading Golden Wings / Music Revolution! (yukigumi 2019 tour)

This has been a long time coming, apologies! As I didn’t write any notes at intermission this will be a shorter, more generalized opinion of the Monday, Oct. 14th performance in Kawasaki. It was two days after the ‘worst storm in Japan in 60 years’ according English news, and ‘violent typhoon no. 19′ in Japanese, which, they weren’t wrong. It was terrifying and exhausting, and I cannot imagine having to put on a brave face and perform like everything is totally fine just a day later. Both sections of Snow Troupe did however, and I will be forever impressed. It does not however, make me inclined to enjoy Spreading Golden Wings any more than I am able to, though this may be the first time I buy a blu-ray for the revue. More thoughts below the cut!

I’ll be popping back into my bullet point format from here.

This is the Revue’s first performance in カルッツかわさき (Culttz Kawasaki, honestly love the name). It’s beautiful, and reminds me of many new performance spaces - bright woods, streamlined design, open lobby and a ton of stairs. The seat I had is still considered S seki, and was pretty nice, though I’m glad I had my opera glasses.

The program is a nice light blue with just Nozomi Fuuto (Daimon) posing in her primary Music Revolution costume (black & silver w/ huge white gems and metal circles). I wish they had a Maaya Kiho (Kiho) variant or a cover with them together, but that’s totally fine.

I did write some notes on the train ride back to Tokyo, so I’ll be using those as a jumping off point. Note that the day before I had seen Star Troupe’s GOD OF STARS, so many of the notes are phrased comparatively. Spoiler-free until the [s]

Spreading Golden Wings

‘limited set’

It’s a touring show, and frankly I’m glad they don’t have to take a lot with them, as they may run into damaged roads on their tour south, but I was still surprised at the sparseness. It didn’t help that the aesthetic was medieval European, which made it look a bit like a televised Shakespeare production. However! This allowed you to focus on the scene without worrying about missing something. Unlike Grand Theater / Tokyo runs where people see a show several times, I would hope tours are designed to be seen once. Thus I’m glad I didn’t leave thinking, ‘oh next time I’ll look at opposite side of the stage, I missed xyz’.

‘single scenes, no additional side scenes’

This is something that made GOD OF STARS simultaneously amazing and terrible, as there were always 45 people on stage doing something elaborate. Spreading Golden Wings was the complete opposite. It felt old-school, to be sure, but I cannot recall a single scene where something was happening outside of the range of what my opera glasses could see. People could be spaced out across the stage of course, but they were all participating in the same moment. It really highlighted acting choices, especially considering a surprising lack of underscoring allowing you to hear every footstep and breath. The recording of this will flawlessly capture what yukigumi was aiming to project, which will be great to see again.

‘Daimon cackles into and out of a scene’

I will briefly break down the plot and characters in a bit, but there is an early scene where the villainous Vittorio, played by Daimon, enters the room where he is holding Clarice, played by Kiho, captive, and her laugh as she enters was identical to the laugh she gave as she left two minutes later. I thought it was fantastically over the top and well within the aesthetic of the work.

‘Kiho is ... befuddled / confused / flabbergasted -> meta for her character?’

I had a hard time with Clarice in this show, let’s be real. Kiho used her huge eyes to her advantage, looking woefully overwhelmed for the first 80% of the show, and confidently winging it (and therefore vaguely panicked) the last 20%. I would love to hear Kiho’s thoughts on the character, which may be in a Kageki somewhere if someone has the most recent issue.

‘Asami Jun just obsessed w/ Daimon’

I can’t speak for Asami but her character, Falco, gets one of the few solos to solely sing about how everything he does is for Vittorio. If you want to memorize the ‘ために’ grammar pattern do I have the song for you. It felt very St-Just 2.0 but it was still super engaging and later provided some shock value.

‘few interstitial chorus scenes’

I completely forgot this half of yukigumi had ~40 people in it until they would do a dance to establish the scene. The show starts with quite a long prologue, but I still forgot them completely until they would all pop up again to either establish a new location, tone, or event. It is very reminiscent of hoshigumi’s Elbe from earlier this year. This show does not require more than a dozen people for the plot, so when everyone shows up in roles clearly not meant to directly impact the story it was quite a surprise.

‘purposefully better sword work’

There are a few fight scenes / sword training scenes in the show, and the choreography for them becomes increasingly complicated as the show progresses, which was a nice touch.

[s] Kiho especially makes a dramatic improvement as the show progresses, which makes sense thematically, but by the end she’s legitimately holding her own against otokoyaku who have generally had more fight training (unless she did for Mibugishiden, which I have not seen)

[s] ‘clearly a repro of the 85 show’ / ‘tbh can’t tell what has changed’

Alrighty so it’s time to dive into the core of the interest around this production - the fact that it was originally a taidan / tour back in 1985, and that when this show was announced it was immediately followed up with, ‘we’re rewriting some things to make it fresh for modern audiences’. It was not relabeled in the same way as Elbe was with ‘Once Upon a Time in Takarazuka’, but there was a significant amount of notice paid to the fact that some things would be different. My question though as we went into intermission was, what changed? Reading through the plot on takawiki, the beats are the same. Full disclosure, I am not fluent in Japanese. There is a great chance that it is simply a nuance of language that perhaps makes the motivations behind actions more gray, but it does not change the fact that the scenes still play out with the same result. I believe there is an additional love song at the end between Daimon and Kiho because they sound ~amazing~ and can emote ~so well~ but that was perhaps the only thing that felt fresh to me. Everyone that betrays someone still betrays that person, questionable scenes of consent still look quite questionable, the interesting shift from lady to page boy was still fun to see. But I believe they were the same as before, and I don’t consider acting choices within scenes to allow for ambiguity to be rewrites. That’s just the benefit of restaging a production. Perhaps the chorus scenes were fleshed out, but I was expecting shifts in plot, character arcs, or concrete visual differences in motivation. I would love for a full breakdown of this show once the recording is released at the end of January.

[s] ‘some spicy scenes, audience was caught up’ / ‘whip scene? :o’

Here’s a brief breakdown of the core plot after me talking around it for 10 minutes

Daimon plays Vittorio, the lord of an Italian city state of Lago that is always feuding with the nearby city state of Bolzano. He kills the lord of Bolzano, and takes his daughter, Clarice (played by Kiho) prisoner. She of course is not on board with this. When she meets him, however, she is shaken up by his attractiveness, and he declares that she belongs to him now, no questions please. He attempts to force his point, she clumsily whips out a dagger that she loses immediately (sigh), and he is now charmed and attracted, and decides to teach her the basics of sword-fighting which will definitely not be needed later. Meanwhile Vittorio’s old bff/prime minister/secret admirer Falco (Asami Jun) is Not Having It. After clearly demonstrating to the audience his, honestly no other way to phrase it, love of Vittorio, we see that he will do whatever it takes to ensure Vittorio does not become weak in his love for Clarice.

Various plot things happen that put Clarice in danger and Vittorio saving her / demonstrating his passion for her, and eventually the prime minister of Bolzano (Clarice’s father’s old city state) Guillermo (Kujou Asu), catches on. This results in Vittorio and Clarice being captured, with Vittorio chained, whipped (by Falco!) and leaving without an eye.

Sometime later, Clarice, now dressed in disguise as a page boy and seemingly willingly with Vittorio, delivers a message to Guillermo from Vittorio, challenging him to a duel.

Vittorio (+1 sexy eyepatch) and Gulliermo (-1 for losing his cool and planning to use poison to win) duel. It is sanctioned by the Pope, who should be busy doing holy things but here we are. Several people jump into the fray after the attempted poison, Clarice shows off her sword skills like a boss, the Golden Wings of Vittorio’s city state arrive, and all is well. There’s a brief bit at the end where Vittorio and Clarice declare their love for each other, and curtain.

I definitely left out some side plots and characters because I wanted to get to my thoughts on a few main scenes I saw and wish I saw.

bed scene - early on in the show Vittorio forces himself onto Clarice. Daimon being Daimon leaves a bit of space as she looms over Kiho, but Kiho squeaked, there is no other way to describe it, and I wanted to gasp with surprise. Everyone and their mother had stopped breathing and stared through their opera glasses, collectively releasing it when Kiho went for the knife (after quite a hold - it was clear she had the release point on the scene and leaned into it)

whip scene - I was like, ‘oh this is scandy what’s going to happen’. It’s not as dramatic/musicalized as 1789, but I was still surprised. The only thing that pulled me out of it was the lack of cuffs on the wall XD. Daimon just held her arms up, shout out to that arm strength. Anytime someone gets whipped it’s pretty intense, and Daimon is great at pulling out strong emotions from pain. The yells, ooooof.

the scenes between the escape and the duel challenge - I really want to chalk this up to my lack of language, but I wanted more scenes between Vittorio and Clarice after their escape and before the duel, as it’s quite clear Clarice isn’t going anywhere. (Even back to her own home city state that she must not be welcome in anymore) I think that would have been a great place to add some softer moments, not just grand displays of affection due to a traumatic circumstance or misdirected force. Doesn’t have to be a coffee shop scene or even a wound-tending scene, but perhaps Clarice working with Vitorrio to account for his new lack of depth perception? Or another sword-fight training scene? I just wanted more Daimon and Kiho but not at the dramatic extremes of this Shakespearean-esque drama.

All in all, looking back on Spreading Golden Wings I had a better time than I originally thought. I never doubted for a second that yukigumi: top star edition wouldn’t put it’s all into this smaller scale production. Every scene oozed with intention, strong acting choices, and when it allowed for it, beautiful songs and choreography. I only wish the source material was a bit more... nuanced? Though there is charm in it’s clear presentation and design. As I type I waffle back and forth, so I will simply move on to Music Revolution. Once the recording comes out however, I’d love to hear other folk’s thoughts.

Music Revolution

I f*king loved this revue, and I did not see it coming. I had assumed a scaled down GT/TT revue would feel sparse but I was shut right the hell up immediately. First things first my journal’s incredibly vague bullet points.

‘got more and more fun’

This is so basic yet so true. Usually there’s a slump in a revue for me somewhere, a slower ballad or dance section, but I only got more hype as the revue went on. Spreading Golden Wings felt short due to the generally straightforward plot, but if you told me Music Revolution was 2 hours I would say sure, and I loved every minute.

‘’Music is My Life’ is so damn fun’

Thanks for the detail, past me. But truly, hearing crisp English, incredibly strong and beautiful yukigumi voices, sharp choreography... it was a dream. I was charmed to no end by how clearly Daimon loved that song. This feels like it could be a main theme for her moving forward, or one that comes back quite a bit for yukigumi or zuka as a whole. One of my favorite moments.

‘Lots of dancing, Daimon’s voice almost too strong?!’

This no doubt was bolstered by seeing hoshigumi right before (sorry not sorry) but it felt like yukigumi was dancing so hard all the time. Clearly the folks not in Spreading Golden Wings just went twice as hard for the revue as a result. And Daimon was in the thick of it, matching beat for beat to only then belt some amazing notes. After spending the previous week in hoshi taidan sadness / cheer it was so refreshingly perfect. Her couple of solo moments were mesmerizing, and I’m so glad I can sink back into my yuki love while waiting for hoshi to ramp back up.

‘amazing music, classical remixes so fun, trumpet and sax go home’

does the orchestra travel with them?? because if so, the f*king brass section went berserk during the jazz dance section and I nearly had a heart attack. It was so off the walls that they have to had recorded it in advance - it was way too hardcore to repeat every show. I wanted to applaud for the solo like you would in a standard jazz concert but alas.

similarly, this revue has the highest proportion of my favorite thing in revues - classical music remixes. Idk if they are popular but I love hearing the orchestration choices and genres they throw at classical melodies, and what bonkers choreo they toss in there as well.

‘adlib sections were stronger, lots of space’

While there were not extended sections to adlib an entire scene, there were some spots where the troupe or Daimon run into the audience. As it’s a tour, there is a bit of space in the song for the folks to navigate different sized halls. For this performance, Kiho was singing for Daimon as she jogged through the first floor, and as she made it back up to the stage she went to regard the folks in the first row before realizing she didn’t have time. ‘Ah shoot I have to be back up there the song’s almost done’ she remarked with a laugh as she hopped back on stage to regard a smirking Kiho. It was pretty fun, and it was nice to see her not panicked about it. Kiho had the song covered, there was still underscoring for her to make it back, and she had a charming way of commenting on it. Yay adlib improvement! There are some other places during full troupe dances where they can shout out the city / prefecture they are in, which Daimon and co. were quite inclined to do as she is from Yokohama, the capital of the Kanagawa prefecture where the show was happening.

I wish I had more concrete notes for this, like I do GOD OF STARS, but I hope this provides a bit of context when you get a chance to see it for youself. It’s not my favorite yuki show by any stretch, it’s honestly probably near the bottom, but it’s not from lack of effort or enthusiasm. It serves a unique role and no doubt checks off some square on Daimon’s ‘how to conquer Takarazuka’ bingo card so for that I’m glad. The revue on the other hand, is one of my favorites. I’ve never had such a stark contrast in my opinion on two ‘acts’ before, which in and of itself is fun to reflect on. I really like where yuki is at right now, and cannot wait to see Once Upon a Time in America.

Stay tuned for the most overlong and overdue look at GOD OF STARS this side of the Pacific.

#snow troupe #spreading golden wings #yukigumi #Habatake Ougon no Tsubasa yo #Music Revolution!#tour 2019 #Nozomi Fuuto #Daimon #Maaya Kiho #Kiho #Asami Jun

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