Outside it was a cold and rainy spring day in Tokyo's residential Bunkyo-ku. Inside the 300-seater Sanbyakunin Gekijo theater, though, excitement filled the air as people milled around trying to get hold of standby tickets for Gekidan Subaru's latest production, "Philip's Reason."
The day I went along was the last performance, and by then word about the play had obviously spread beyond the usual theater-going circles to local people. I was particularly amazed by the number of young teenagers there by themselves. Clearly Gekidan Subaru is well rooted in the local community -- no mean feat for a small theater group, and a testament, no doubt, to its provision of translated scripts and clear background notes for foreign dramas.
This play, by the English dramatist and actor, Kevin Elyot, opened last year at the Royal Court Theatre in London under the title, "Mouth to Mouth." It proved such a success that it transferred to the West End. Birmingham-born Elyot, 51, is one of the most outstanding dramatists working in Britain today, having won both the Evening Standard and the Laurence Olivier awards for Best Comedy and the Writer's Guild and Critics' Circle awards for "My Night With Reg" in 1994.