Kosei Arima (Zheng Xi Yong) was a child piano prodigy, winning multiple classical music competitions where accuracy was prized over everything else, and earning himself the nickname of "the human metronome." But after his mother's death he gave up playing entirely, claiming he could no longer hear music.
Now in high school, he meets Kaori Miyazono (Mia Kobayashi,) a violinist who shocks the judges but excites the audience by playing her own variations and riffs at a competition. Kaori soon joins his friend group, who become a love square of misunderstood feelings - Kosei is in love with Kaori but thinks she's interested in his football-star friend Watari (Dean John-Wilson,) while Tsubaki (Rachel Clare Chan) loves Kosei but knows he doesn't return her feelings. While the teenagers navigate this, they miss the fact that Kaori suffers from Period Drama Cough's more dramatic cousin: Period Drama Constantly Fainting At The Most Inopportune Moment.
So you can see where the story's going very early on, and as I say it's unquestionably cheesy but also hugely charming and enjoyable. Wildhorn scores high on tunefulness - if you come out of this not remembering a particular song it's probably because there's too many of them vying to be the most memorable. If anything it's a bit too overloaded with songs: At times they come in far too thick and fast and you haven't really had a chance to take in the last big number before the next one kicks in.
If the show gives us a fairly stereotyped fairytale Japan this is probably excusable on the grounds that Winston and Murphy's production leans heavily into the story's manga origins; there's definitely a cartoonish quality to the show, particularly in the way John-Wilson's Watari keeps striking hero poses (which also nicely flags the characters' theme, that Kosei doesn't realise he's the hero of this story and assumes that his friend is.) Yong confidently leads a strong cast, also providing the character's virtuosic piano playing. Kaori's violin playing is mimed while an onstage musician takes over, but Kobayashi is vocally and emotionally very impressive in her professional debut.
Chan and John-Wilson provide some comic relief and they're backed up by Ericka Posadas and Ernest Stroud as Kosei's weirdly helpful wannabe-nemeses. Things get laid on pretty thick again in flashbacks to young Kosei (Eoin McLoughney at this performance) and his late mother (Lucy Park,) whose demands of perfection in his piano-playing go a bit beyond tough love and probably land somewhere closer to actual sociopathy; projections of the mother's eyeless face also haunt the present-day action and put the shits up Phill. But for all that the show's roots are in overwrought teen romance, Your Lie In April embraces that to an extent that, along with the likeable performances, just makes the show work. And it's definitely one to hope for a cast recording from.
Your Lie In April by Frank Wildhorn, Carly Robyn Green, Tracy Miller, Riko Sakaguchi and Rinne B Groff, based on the manga by Naoshi Arakawa, is booking until the 21st of September at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Craig Sugden.
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