Your Lie In April

Harold Pinter Theatre Three | ★★★✩✩

The phrase “the Japanese are coming” doesn’t quite have same ring to as when the Colin Welland said it about the British while picking up his Oscar for Chariots of Fire. But in an era when manga has taken up a huge share of our streaming content and Studio Ghibli films have become some of the most compelling reasons to go to the cinema, so too are are stages hosting Japanese storytelling in the form of the hugely impressive Spirited Away and now this adapted version of Naoshi Arakawa’s much loved manga comic Your Lie in April.

Think of your typically American high school musical but with the love interest between musical prodigies instead of jocks and cheerleaders. Kaori (Mia Kobayashi) is the talent who for reasons best known to herself (and later revealed) wants to play music as a way of self-expression instead of following the rules of music competitions and serving only the music as written by composers.

Zheng Wi Yong Credit: Craig Sugden

Former piano golden boy Kosei Arima (Zheng Wi Yong) who has not played since his (tiger) mother died is so intrigued by Kaori he becomes drawn back into the world rejected.

What is so interesting about this love story is how the virtues underpinning it are so very mildly transgressive. Kaori doesn’t rebel by ditching her instrument and becoming a punk, she does it by being brilliant with the violin in an unorthodox way.

This comes through despite, not because of Frank Wildhorn’s very Broadway-like score. Nick Winston’s production therefore falters because it is never quite at home in either the Western musical world or Japanese storytelling tradition the show embraces.