Week Fourteen

At A Glance

• Androgenous Glittery Peacocks

Links

Home
Last Week
Feeling Sadistic? Wanna Poke a Penguin? Click here!
Japanese Cars-The Horrible Truth
Next Week

1) Thursday I had the special opportunity of going to see the Japanese Opera. This involved me and several other ladies plus Jmum and sisters Ayuko and Mizuki packing into a severely stunted bus and trekking four hours north and along the coast to a city near Kobe to see the Takarazuka Revue in its Golden Week 90th Anniversary Supa Glitsy Show.
The show itself was especially particular as all the actors were women. Gods were played by women, men were played by women, women were played by women. It was a oestrogen packed show. Actually the men parts were played so well that I thought a group of particularly good drag queens had wandered out of the Sydney Gay and Lesbien and gate-crashed Japan.
The first part of the show was an old story about some guy that is given a sword and being down-trodden and picked on earlier in his life starts on a crusade to kill and beat everyone into submission. Now, in modern times they would probably go to a shrink but no, when in Japan 400 years ago its kill, kill, kill if someone erks you. However in the end he is dully rewarded for his disgusting behaviour and is made a demi-god AND gets the girl too. *shakes head*
The second part of the show was basically a excuse to use all those dropped sequins off the floor and dead pigeons from the tip and to make huge supa shimmery, feather bristling hot pink, green, purple and white, eye scorching numbers that threatened to catch everything on fire like a green ant under a magnifying glass. The second part of the show itself was a celebration of the 90 years of the Takarazuka Revue which meant about 50 thin...toned...curvy *grrr* girls lining up into a can-can line and singing "Ta-ka-ra-zu-ka Gloooo---ooooryyyy!!!" over and over while kicking legs in every which way and threatening to brain their neighbours and themselves, WITH a huge blinking neon sign reading (of course) "Takarazuka Glory" (you need visual aides) in the background.
The finale was set on a huge steep flight of stairs that blinked "Takarazuka Glory" where everyone of the cast walked down in increasingly shiner and shiner costumes until the Prima actress/actor (?) descended in a cloud of white meter and a half long feathers not unlike an albino peacock. Very, very spectacular.
But did I like it? Well, yes actually I did. For all the time that I didn't understand it, was blinded by the disco ball and shiney costumes and hated the high pitchness of it all I actually did really enjoy it. It was a day well spent.