Marking four centuries since the death of William Shakespeare in 1616, the 101-year-old all-female Takarazuka Revue company is currently staging a new musical titled "Shakespeare: The Sky Filled With Eternal Words" at its Takarazuka Grand Theater in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, ahead of a Tokyo season starting next month.
Although the Bard's plays are known the world over, and are performed more than any other writer's, little is known of his personal life — especially his so-called lost years from 1578-82 and 1585-92. Speculation also abounds how the son of a glove-maker from a small country town rose to the pinnacle of English Renaissance theater with neither wealth, family connections nor a university education behind him?
Hence Takarazuka's adaptation of Shakespeare's biography, written and directed by Hirokazu Ikuta, is an amalgam of fact and fiction, such as the films "Shakespeare in Love" and "Anonymous," that creates an imaginative vision of the iconic poet and playwright's life and loves.
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