Yesterday I went to see Tomo's stage play "Atami Murder Case". The one he grew a mustache and slight beard for. Technically, it wasn't even really a day ago, but since I slept for five hours and it's now 6:30AM of the next day, I'll call it that. Truth be told, I was trying to sleep longer, because we have to go solve a serious problem with our rent, but when I tried to get back to sleep at 5:30AM-ish, I just lay there for an hour unable to sleep, thinking about Tomo's play. So I figured I could write a little about it (not a full or real report), while I'm awake.

First, a summary of the play in English:

Please read it HERE (or you might not understand the play ^^;;). Tomo plays the criminal, Oyama.

Alright! ...Although...I really don't know where to start...

I guess...we were in S row, seats 2 and 3, so we were pretty much three rows from the back, and on the left side of the auditorium. Being on the left side was a good thing in the end, and even being that far back, we still had a great view (although being up-front would have been much better). A lot of people came into the theater late though, which was rude--for example, the seat in front of Marysa was open the entire time, so we had a great view--until this HUGE business guy finally showed up. And of all the tiny Japanese women who went to the show, you guessed it, massive businessman sat right in front of Marysa. The seats are staggered, but not well, so Marysa had that guy's head as her view for most of the show. Half the time she couldn't even see Tomo because of it. As for me, I had a view between that guy's head and the lady next to him, so I was able to see Tomo and the stage very well. (Before that though, while we were waiting for the play to start, I flipped through my pamphlet of the show that I'd bought and really enjoyed the pics of Tomo. In fact, there were some pics of him in glasses very much like Harry Potter's, and I told Marysa that he looked a lot like Harry Potter. Little did I know that in fact he would be Harry Potter! ^_~)

The actual play opened with the theme from Swan Lake, the oboe solo, and it was really beautiful. The way the lights died out and that music played through the blackness of the theater, I felt this surge of emotion. I was really sure the play was going to be just like last time, opening up with really beautiful music and giving me a rush of emotions. Unfortunately, the beautiful music is for a scene without Tomo. It's just the three detectives. At the loud part in the music, the curtain flies up, and we see the main detective chatting very animatedly (and maybe angrily) on the telephone, with smoke all along the floor (very phantom-of-the-opera-esque). When that and the music end, the detectives are having a conversation about Tchaikovsky. That was actually the only thing I know they were talking about. Otherwise, the dialogue was so fast that I really had no hopes of understanding full sentences. (And now I can understand why Tomo had said in a recent interview that he had had a very hard time understanding the lines when he first looked at the script.) I should also point out here that the costumes they were all wearing and the entire set itsel were old-fashioned, like Sherlock Holmes Era, which was cool, considering later things that happened in the play that had a more modern feel.

Anyway, that first particular scene seemed to drag on for a while, and though everyone around me was laughing, I really didn't get it because everything was too fast for me. Then suddenly, they started showing the title of the show on a screen behind the actors, followed by each actor's name. At that point, the actor whose name was on the screen would take some kind of pose, the spotlight on just them for a moment. When they got to Tomo's name, however, they didn't do anything like that because he wasn't onstage yet. I thought that would just be it and they'd keep going (in which I felt really bad for Tomo), but then suddenly, a spotlight came on in the audience, a few rows down from us.

IT WAS TOMO!!!! He was in the audience on our side!!!! Marysa said she'd seen him come in and had wondered who it was, but I was such a dumb-arse, I completely missed it! So, he's of course wearing his orange jailbait uniform, and some sunglasses and is holding a microphone, and he begins walking down the aisle singing some kind of really ghetto song (I think it's EXILE's "24Karats"). He occasionally stops to do some dance moves, then heads up the other aisle to about the fourth or fifth row, where, according to Marysa, he does some kind of hip-thrust.

Now, this is where I have to stop talking about the play for a second...Tomo does that hip-thrust to the person on the right side, aisle seat, about four or five rows up...Which just happens to be where I'm sitting next time for the play when we go again on Sunday. O__O AKA, if things go well, I might get a Tomo hip-thrust in my face!! (LOL)

The thought made me really happy and I thought he looked really cool, I really did! But the people on the left side are even luckier than those of us who will be sitting on the right for the next show. Because while he was singing, Tomo pulled out a rose and gave it to the girl on the left side, front row. Then, he went back up the aisle to about the fourth row (still on the left side) and grabbed one girl by the hand gently, and kissed her hand. So lucky!!!! I think he did that because she'd waved to him when he appeared, so he probably knew she was his fan and felt comfortable to approach her. (Now I wanna get the strength to do something like that, give him a peace sign or something when he comes my way, although I know that would be unprofessional. XD)

After that, the detectives on stage (already lined up after being introduced) are saluting. Tomo marches up the steps and into place with the detectives and also saluting. And so the play begins.

Now, for much of the play, Tomo sits on a stool on the left side of the stage. Normally that would be perfect for our seats next time (on the right side), because at any other stage show, it would mean he's facing the right side. However, this is not the case. For whatever reason, he's sitting on the left side and constantly facing the woman to his left, which means even if we're close up next time, we won't get to see much of his face. (Which was what I was waiting for--I love his expressions!) He also spends a lot of his time on that end of the stage, which sucks...And the other three detectives often end up on our side, and in a position where they will be blocking Tomo on the other... -.-;; I just hope that doesn't end up being the case.

Anyway, since it was hard for me to follow (I only know the basics of the story, which I mentioned above), I could only watch Tomo's actions. It seemed that throughout the play, the three detectives were playing mind games with Tomo, trying to trick him into telling them what happened. (In the context of the original play, where the criminal was played by an older man, this would probably be funny, but as Tomo looks like a kid, it just looked like the three detectives were torturing a kid with mind games, and so I think because of that the audience felt more of a connection with Tomo than the detectives.) I think, like the summary states, they were saying he's too stupid to have killed anyone and things like that. But the games they played with him (that he stupidly went along with) were actually hilarious. I wanna talk about some of them below.

Well, one of the first games they did was dancing to an AKB48 song. I kid you not, the entire cast (all four of them, that is) got up and started doing the dance moves to an AKB48 song, with the song playing in the background. Somehow, watching Tomo do all those feminine movements gave me a mix of emotions--something weird about seeing him as having the hips to do some of those moves, and yet he was extremely talented at the dance (it was really too enjoyable to watch), and he looked adhslahfalhfalshaljghajdhglajdhgjlhhsljahs cute doing it too (big smile on his face and everything). I hope I'll be able to see him as well for the next show, because that dance was absolutely freaking amazing, and I wish I could record it or something. So cute!!!!!

Another time, the main detective accidentally drops a gun, and Tomo is the first to pick it up. Everyone goes quiet in that moment, and he aims it first at the two male detectives, then at the female, giving a quiet and cute (and slightly retarded) laugh. Then while he's examining the gun, the three detectives get together. One of them tosses their shoe, and then they start doing some kind of dance. I'm not sure to describe it, although it looked a lot like a Rockettes' show style of foot-stomping, or some kind of American dance, like "Turkey in the Straw." XD Except they were singing something a lot funnier. When Tomo heard the shoe drop, his attention quickly left the gun in his hand to see what was going on. And as soon as he saw they were dancing, he wanted to be in on it. So once they finished their dance, he tried to imitate it by himself, looking very much like a hyper, super-adorable, but slightly retarded little boy. I thought it was funny how his voice cracked trying to imitate the song the detectives had been singing. XD When he finishes the dance, the detectives all stare at him and then tell him his version was "too boring", to which Tomo eventually ends up dropping the gun and kicking it over to them. 

There's also another game they play later on. This section I KNOW was all improv. Meaning basically whatever happened here really had not been planned as part of the show, but which they came up with on the spot. The main detective, Tomo, and the female detective are in line on stage. Suddenly, the main detective starts doing some kind of silly Spanish-like dance, moving in a circle and going, "Cha-chachacha-chachacha!" Or something like that. XD Both Tomo and the female detective burst out laughing. Tomo tried to hide his face in his arm, and the female detective didn't even bother. XD It was too funny to watch. Since Tomo was next in line, apparently he had to imitate whatever the main detective had done, but he also had to add on his own move (which the female detective would then imitate and add a move on, and so forth). So Tomo tried to imitate the hip-swinging, close-legged, spinning Spanish-dance the main detective had done, although his was much slower and much less graceful (and much more of him wiggling his butt XD), and the "cha-chachacha-chachacha" he tried to sing was too cute (his voice was cracking again XD). Then, when he was facing the audience again, he started doing more para-para-like movements with his arms, making a heart/kyun~ shape with his hands, then spinning onto the floor, and spreading his legs open wide, to which a spotlight focused in between his legs and there was some kind of silly sound effect. XD He was saying something the whole time too, but it was really interesting....X'D

Of course, the female detective was expected to copy both of what they had done. To which, still laughing, she shook her head and basically implied, "Hell no." The main detective kept egging her on, saying she had to do it, but she was like, "Nope." XD GO FEMALE DETECTIVE! In the end, the three of them all tried to do the movements together, and in the end Tomo and the female detective stopped before they could even get to the movement Tomo had come up with, because the two of them were laughing again so hard at the main detective doing his silly cha-cha dance. XDDDDDDD

There was also a part later in the show where the main detective says he needs to go to visit the "toire no kamisama" (god of the toilet), which basically is him parodying a song that recently came out here in Japan, called "Toire no kamisama." So on his way to the bathroom, he starts singing the song. XDDD I laughed so hard at that!

And in addition, another part where the song from Swan Lake begins again, and two men dressed as ballerinas come flying out and basically attack Tomo and then just stand there pretending to do ballerina movements. XDDDD

But perhaps the BEST random mind-game they played with Tomo was the Harry Potter one. Yes, I did say Harry Potter. Throughout the show, there was a blank screen behind the actors and behind the set the actors performed on. Suddenly, at one point in the show, the screen lit up, and trees started rushing by to Hedwig's Theme, from the Harry Potter movie series. The main detective seemed to be announcing that they were going to play a Harry Potter game now, but it was when Tomo came riding out on stage on a broomstick that I cracked up. XD I'll try to write it the way the scene seemed to progress:

Tomo: (riding onto the middle of the stage on a broomstick) I'm Harrii Pottaa!

Suddenly, a guy in a really hideous blond wig comes flying out behind him (it's the secondary male detective).

Tomo: (screaming) Ah! Ma-ru-foi!

He and the secondary detective "fly" off the stage on their brooms. XD While that's happening, some guy comes walking onto the stage and kneels there. He's basically wearing some kind of ancient Roman-like robe, with the strap hanging off of one shoulder, a huge makeshift and crappy set of house elf ears on his head. XD

Main Detective: (Since the Harry Potter music is still going and the trees are still flashing by, and the Dobby guy is just kneeling there doing nothing.) ...Who are you?

Dobby Guy: I'm Dobby.

At that point, Tomo comes flying back onto the stage. Since Malfoy is still following him, he suddenly spins around and pushes his hands forward, palms outwards, and what seems to be lightning comes from his hands and attacks Malfoy. Malfoy goes flying off the stage. I forget what happens next, but suddenly the female detective also appears behind him.

Female Detective: Harry!

Tomo: (Spinning around to face the female detective.) Haamaione!

He seems to grab Hermione's hand at that moment, when suddenly the main detective appears in front of him.

Tomo: (backing up) AAAAH! Vorudemooto!

(...XD)

The Main Detective, looking pleased, steps forward and goes:

Main Detective: Aaah, yes. I am Voldemort.

He goes on to say something else, but suddenly the Secondary Detective appears onstage again.

Secondary Detective: I'm here!

Tomo: (sounding a little annoyed) Who the hell are you?

Secondary Detective: I'm Ron!

Tomo and the Female Detective are like, "Oh!" and are about to approach "Ron", but then "Ron" sees "Voldemort" and tells Harry and Hermione to run and that he'll keep Voldemort away. He basically tries to fight Voldemort and then gets turned into some kind of zombie thing. XDDDD

After that Tomo and the Female Detective as "Harry" and "Hermione" try to make plans about how they will save Ron and defeat Voldemort, during which the guy playing Ron has posed on the detective's desk standing on one leg, with "Voldemort" in front of him to hide the leg he's standing on and using one hand to pretend he is holding "Ron" up. I don't know if you know what I mean here, but basically even though Ron was using one leg to stand up, this was what it looked like they were doing. (We all cracked up about this, seriously. XD They also bobbed at the same time, up and down, so it looked like Voldemort was making Ron float. XD)

Eventually, Hermione ends up telling Harry she's going to sacrifice herself too to save him (or something like that), and so she too becomes a zombie and ends up holding up the other two detectives on either side while they are moaning and groaning in really zombie-like voices directly behind Tomo, saying something to Tomo/Harry. Tomo seems like there's nothing left he can do to save himself or his friends, so he instead curls up in a ball on the floor, hiding his ears and his face from them. (Maybe the character in the play was getting sick of playing this mind game with them.) So the three detective zombies behind him suddenly use some kind of party popper things to send a whole bunch of white streamers sailing all over Tomo, trapping him beneath the streamers (seriously, there were a TON of those things!). And so the Harry Potter mind-game ends.

Honestly, it was the most mind-blowing thing I've ever seen on stage, and even weirder that Tomo was a part of it! Watching it, I sympathized more with the bad guy (Tomo) than with the detectives, because it really seemed like he was Alice and had fallen down a rabbit hole into an extreme version of Wonderland. They really were messing with him! In fact, throughout the stage play, they all seemed to have fun abusing him. Granted, he did push them around quite a bit (he and the main detective had a running-at-each-other-and-pushing contest at one point, which Tomo seemed to enjoy, he was laughing a lot), but they were really abusive. One of the male detectives nearly strangled him at one point, and the female detective beat the crap out of him at one point, groin shots included.

But I guess their mind games on him worked, because towards the end, the female detective pretended to be his girlfriend, and they "relived" the moment on the beach where he murdered his girlfriend. This was how they found out that Tomo had strangled her to death by accident. Throughout the play, they were trying to make it seemed like he'd raped her or something (I didn't quite like him climbing on top of the female detective to imitate that, although for that matter, he didn't look like he liked it either >_>), but in the end, it turns out that he had killed her accidentally. While he's imitating how he had strangled her to death, he's really crying, and it sounds so sad!!! ;__;

Once the detectives find this out about him, however, that he did indeed kill his girlfriend, the fun and mind-games end (although I think it becomes a mind-game for the audience). The main detective comes out first and begins beating the crap out of Tomo with a bouquet of flowers. When they're destroyed, he goes and gets another bouquet and further beats the boy up. He also proceeds to kick Tomo off of the stage (literally off of the stage, Tomo rolls into the audience), and the main detective himself goes into the audience to hug some girl in the front row while Tomo crawls back onto the stage. Tomo realizes that he's just confessed to the murder, and so he starts bowing (head-to-floor) to the detectives in turn, as fast as he can, trying to get them to sympathize with him and not have him locked up (or worse) for the murder. He even starts trying to clean up the stool he was sitting on for a lot of the play (I'm not sure why), then tries to shine the main detective's shoes with his hands as fast as he can. They also randomly put a pair of white sneakers tied by the laces around his neck and make him stay like that for the rest of the show. (I'm really not sure what this was all about. O.o)

After this, Tomo ends up leaving. Literally just leaving. He says his name and then says he's "going." I'm not really sure what is meant by this, and I don't even understand why the show ends with the detectives talking about something new. I really don't understand it at all, and I felt like I'd been on an acid-trip or something after watching the show. Still, I really enjoyed it! And they came out to bow a few times, which was great. Unfortunately, when the lights came on, a lot of jerks in the audience seemed to think that they could just get up and leave. But in most shows out here, the curtain opens three times, and they hadn't done their third time yet. So I was really annoyed that when the curtain opened again, the cast had to see people already leaving (including some idiot right near us who was standing up putting on his jacket). Since Tomo was on our side, I know he saw it too. But I tried to sit up tall and hoped he could somehow see me really happy for him and about the play.



And so it ended. I really loved seeing Tomo do something unlike what he's ever done before, and I look forward to seeing it again! I just hope that a) the view is good enough in regards to Tomo and b) the show will end up DVD. But I'm grateful I got to go in the first place--Tomo is really, really amazing. <3