Ken Hill's delightfully humorous Phantom of the Opera is coming to Japan. Tickets go on sale Feb. 28.
The musical premiered in its current incarnation the Royal Theater in Stratford, East London in 1984 and was the inspiration for Lloyd-Webber's wildly popular version.
Though Hill and Lloyd-Webber both drew on Leroux's original text, there is no mistaking Ken Hill's tongue-in-cheek look at the melodramatic pretensions of the opera world within the Lloyd-Webber interpretation.
The English language production will tour Japan in June and July, and will feature sub-titles projected on stage for Japanese audiences. The current schedule calls for stops in Tokyo, Hokkaido, Akita, Sendai, Hamamatsu, Nagoya, Niigata, Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka.
The first show will be at Tokyo's Aoyama Gekijo on June 16. Tickets will be available at the theater or through Ticket Pia outlets throughout the country. For more information call Kyodo Tokyo at (03) 3498-9999. --By Carter Witt
Japan Correspondent
