"One Green Bottle" is a new-ish work co-written by the renowned Japanese dramatist Hideki Noda and Will Sharpe, who shot to fame in Britain in 2016 with the comedy series "Flowers," which he wrote, directed and also starred in.
The title of the play — now being staged at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre in Ikebukuro — comes from the final verse of the children's song "Ten Green Bottles," which, like so many nursery rhymes, has a dark side, as Noda, with his excellent command of English, knows well.
In fact, as the distinguished Welsh physical actor Glyn Pritchard — one of the three cast members along with Noda and the award-winning English actress Kathryn Hunter — disclosed to The Japan Times, "One Green Bottle" actually started life as "Omote ni Deroi!" ("Step Outside!"), a comedy written and directed by Noda that was staged at TMT in 2010, the year after Noda became artistic director there.