Written by English playwright Richard Bean, and premiered in London in 2010, "The Big Fellah" spans 30 years in the lives of U.S. supporters of the Irish Republican Army as that movement fought to sever Northern Ireland's ties to the United Kingdom and unify the island of Ireland.
For any dramatists anywhere, staging a work on such a complex subject that's still so sensitive would be a major challenge; that it's about to open in Tokyo with an all-Japanese cast, then tour nationwide, is really quite remarkable. And, as the acclaimed director Shintaro Mori also teams up here with stage and screen star Seiyou Uchino, this production is surely set to be a prime landmark of Japan's theater world in 2014.
For Mori, 37, though, the play's problems have not all been geopolitical. "I and all the fans of his films and TV dramas know how emotional and enthusiastic Uchino can be," last year's winner of a prestigious Yomiuri Theater Award said with a laugh as we chatted at Setagaya Public Theatre in Tokyo recently. "So every day I have been telling him to play it really cool in his role as David Costello, the passionate Big Fellah who heads the IRA's New York branch."