Richard II, Saitama Arts Theatre

Richard II     
Touring: Japan, Romania
Performed in Japanese
February 18, 2016, Saitama Arts Theatre (Opening night), Japan
April 14-15, 2016, Craiova (Festivalul Internațional Shakespeare), Romania 

Name of Company:
Saitama Arts Theatre

Cast:
Saitama Next Theatre:
Genki Hori, Shinya Matsuda, Sakurako Moteki, Erika Shumoto, Akinori Suzuki, Hayata Tateyama, Takamori Teuchi, Shinsuke Urano, Ryo Hirayama, Akira Nakanishi, Erika Osanai, Kenshi Uchida, Nozomi Asano, Kyoko Hori, ShoriIchino, Kazumi Sakabe, Masaru Shirakawa, Jumpei Tsuzuki, Hikaru Abe, Yuki Inoue, Kei Sato, Genta Shirogane, Shinnosuke Suzuki, Hideki Takahashi, Kazuaki Takeda, Rina Tanaka, Mari Yasukawa.

Saitama Gold Theatre:
Hiroko Chino, Keiko Hayashida, Natsue Hyakumoto, Shoko Ishii, Kayo Ishikawa, Masako Kamimura, Fumiko Kamio, Hiromu Kassai, Gashou Kitazawa, Chikako Kobayashi, Hiroko Masuda, Michiyo Miyata, Ryuichi Morishita, Kinue Nakamura, Tomiyoshi Nakano, Mitsuyo Obuki, Miwako Ohgushi, Reiko Sato, Toshihiro Sekine, Kiyoshi Takahashi, SeijiroTakata, Masatake Takei, Tae Takizawa, Kei Takushima, Ritsuko Tamura, Yoshie Tanikawa, Kazuko Tauchi, Keiko Tokuno, Yoichi Toyama, Toshiko Tsumura, Minoru Ubata, Annu Watanabe.

Staff:
Director: Yukio Ninagawa
Director Assistant: Sonsho Inoue
Translator: Kazuko Matsuoka
Set Designer: Tsukasa Nakagoshi
Technical Director/ Lighting Designer: Takeaki Iwashina
Sound Designer: Katsuji Takahashi
Costume Designer: Miho Kurebayashi
Hair & Make-Up Designer: Sachio Nozawa
Fight Coreographer: Naoki Kurihara
Coreographer: Ai Sano
Co-Assistant Directors: Yukari Shiohara, Maki Maehara, Kosuke Hioki
Stage Manager: Jun’ichi Yamada

Funding and Sponsorship:
Produced and Presented by Saitama Arts Theatre Foundation
In Cooperation with Horipro Inc.

This highly theatrical production features a large cast of performers from the two companies of the Saitama Theatre. It therefore mixes young interpreters (Saitama Next) with elderly ones (Saitama Gold), who symbolically move on wheelchairs so as to highlight a feeling of the passing of time and of a physical and moral decaying.

- Sai-no-Kuni Shakespeare Series -

Under the direction and supervision of its Artistic Director (the late Yukio Ninagawa), the “Sai-no-kuni Shakespeare Series”  has put on such popular works as Hamlet and Macbeth as well as plays rarely staged in Japan, such as Antony and Cleopatra and the epic trilogy Henry VI. Also popular is the “All Male Series,” which stages plays as they were originally performed, with an all-male cast. Starting with our co-production of King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the series has been successfully staged overseas such as in Stratford-upon-Avon, London, New York, and Seoul. Now it represents one of the most pioneering Shakespeare productions in Asia, and keeps receiving global attention.

Richard II is the last Shakespeare's play Ninagawa directed, since he passed away aged 80 at the beginning of May 2016.

On Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/shakespearefestivalcraiova/info/

Selected Reviews:
http://eranews.ro/un-richard-japonez-si-alte-cateva-peripetii-shekesperiene-la-craiova/

http://revistaramuri.ro/index.php?id=3396&editie=118&autor=de+Haricleea+Nicolau

News of Yukio Ninagawa in the Media:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/12/yukio-ninagawa-shakespeare-dies-aged-80

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/16/yukio-ninagawa-obituary

Prospero's "true Preservers": Peter Brook, Yukio Ninagawa, and Giorgio Strehler--twentieth-century Directors Approach Shakespeare's The Tempest. By Arthur Horowitz, University of Delaware Press, 2004.

The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare. By John Russell Brown, Routledge, London, 2009.

Brook, Hall, Ninagawa, Lepage: Great Shakespeareans: Volume XVIII. By Peter Holland, and Adrian Poole, Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013.