With a piercing yell, Kuranosuke Sasaki bursts out of the rehearsal studio, his hands covered in (fake) blood. Then seeing me, he smiles and says, "Sorry to keep you waiting" — before returning to intensive preparations with American director Andrew Goldberg for his starring role in their one-man "Macbeth," which opens July 12 at Tokyo's Parco Theater.
Conceived and codirected as a National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) production by Goldberg and Tony Award-winning English dramatist John Tiffany, this bold adaptation of Shakespeare's dark fictional tragedy about a real-life 11th-century Scottish king had its world premiere in Glasgow in June 2012. There, Scottish actor Alan Cumming caused a sensation with his performance before the same production moved straight to the Lincoln Center in New York, and on to Broadway the following year.
In this Japanese version, it's Sasaki we'll find in a psychiatric ward, where he'll portray 20 characters from the Bard's "Macbeth" — including the young king himself, Lady Macbeth, his friend Lord Macduff and Duncan, his ill-fated predecessor on the throne.