Kabuki: Sin City?
The gaudy glitz of Las Vegas may seem a strange setting to present an old, traditional theater form, but those unfamiliar with the Japanese art of kabuki probably don’t know it was developed as a form of entertainment for the masses, full of melodrama, violence and (muted) sex.
Photo: AP Photo / John Locher
The Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is the site of a makeshift kabuki theatre production Aug. 14. It may seem like an odd pairing to those unfamiliar with kabuki but actually makes sense.
So in a sense, the staging of a kabuki play Aug. 14-16 starring superstars Ichikawa Somegoro and Nakamura Yonekichi on a partially submerged stage in the middle of a lake at the Fountains at the Bellagio Hotel Casino was completely natural. The play, called awkwardly in English “Fight With a Carp,” featured an enormous projected fish and roiling seas in one of the genre’s most fantastic battle scenes. The story is about a samurai who falls in love with a young woman who is really the incarnation of a carp’s spirit.
The animal has taken human form in order to exact revenge for the killing of her fish lover. Shochiku, the Japanese company that oversees all mainstream kabuki productions in Japan, worked with MGM Resorts on the project as a means of raising worldwide awareness of kabuki, and according to media reports the production was unique in various ways, more elaborate than most kabuki productions in Japan, and more spectacular than a lot of events held at the Bellagio.
In fact, Jim Murren, the chairman and CEO of MGM Resorts International, called it the “largest-scale production ever seen on the Fountains of Bellagio.”
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