Your Lie in April: The Musical

On Friday, I managed to get myself a chance to go see the production of the Your Lie in April Musical as part of the press opportunity to cover the event at the Harold Pinter Theatre, where the show would be running for a limited period of 12 weeks, between 28th June and 21st September.

Originally scheduled to premiere back in July 2020, this unexpected delay was due to the COVID-19 pandemic that was ongoing at the time,  which meant that it did not have its first public performance until May 2022 in Tokyo, Japan.

Based on the Manga/Anime of the same name by Naoshi Arakawa, the manga series ran from 2011-2015 and was adapted into an anime in 2014.

The story is based around the life of a gifted pianist named Kosei Arima (played by Zheng Xi Yong), also known as Person A in the beginning of the show, whose mother has just recently passed away.

However, due to the trauma he had to endure from his mother from a young age, forced to participate in talent show competitions, this leads him to permanently give up playing piano and therefore, leaving him completely directionless in his final years of high school until he meets another fellow talented musician like himself, a violinist named Kaori Miyazono (played by Mia Koboyasi).

As someone who has not personally watched the anime series, nor read the manga (I know pretty criminal right?) I honestly did not know what to expect with the show and so I arrived having no idea of what the story was about, but also this gave me a chance to experience the musical with an unbiased perspective (which happens super often within the anime community, especially with the elitism and having extremely high expectations of anime shows/films etc).

The design set of the show was immensely beautiful, especially with the sakura flowers, decorated within the borders alongside the stage set, but also how the bridges, skylines and windows/doors were created, which felt like a hybrid of a Japanese home and garden on a spring day/night!

I was also thoroughly amazed by the live band performance, which felt like I was at a live concert, alongside the showcasing performance of Xi Yong playing the piano within their point of view and seeing the pressure and struggles of Arima, trying to perfect his performance with the added difficulty of trying to avoid making one single mistake in order to impress Miyazono.

The performances by the actors/actresses was truly remarkable and I was especially impressed with Koboyasi, with her vocal abilities in “Perfect” and the reprise version, with the emotive prowess of their voice, showcasing the internalized pain of having to live life to her fullest at a young age, not knowing when she would be on her last days, which did indeed make me super emotional.

Whilst I’m not used to seeing media based on a Japanese Anime performed in English, I won’t lie and also say it affected the musical, because it certainly didn’t and I highly recommend going to see it while you can.