Thought on Koki's "OLD maid-JOKER" Play
Finishing watching Koki's last show today and I think I need to write down my thought (and sometimes the thought is just too difficult to express in Japanese :p).
The last time I saw him on stage for a play was ten years ago when he was flying in The Imperial Theatre as the boxer champion. To be honest, I was obviously very upset when he and Johnny's parted because he left my favorite group. I was also very disappointed because it also meant it would be difficult to see him starring in anything in the future. I love him singing and dancing. I also love him acting.
Comparing to many talents, I don't think he had that many roles in the past. However, each one is memorable, in My Boss My Hero as a hooligan, in Tokkyu Tanaka 3 Go as the goofy college student, in Hissatsu as the tailor, in Ooku as the monk and in Dream Boys as the boxer champion. I always enjoy his acting.
Finally, "OLD maid-JOKER" happened. Written/Directed by Hyouga Tanaka. I have never seen his brother's work and I couldn't really guess what the play was about. At first, I was just very excited to see Koki starring in a play again. However, this play was beyond my expectation.
Old maid is a card game that players collect pairs and try not to be left with the joker card. Whoever gets the joker card at the end loses. The story says that the world is like the old maid card game. Most people can find their pairs. They have people who support them. However, only the joker is left alone. No one likes the joker and the joker has no one to be paired with.
Koki played a character with the same name, KOKI, a lonely boy who doesn't understand love, born as a mistake and left by his mother. He was the joker of the story. However, KOKI still desired love, family, friendship, and affection. In the story, we followed him through the past, present, and the future. Sometimes the scene was in reality and sometimes it was in the imagination (or was it all imagination? I don't know). Comparing to other roles, this role didn't have a lot of dialogue. However, I think Koki did such a good job walking us through this character's mind.
There was a scene that he was looking into the past with his mother. His body language and the way he talks were just like a young child.
There was also a scene that he was desperate for love from his mother. We could see his sorrow and the broken heart from his tears.
I felt some emotions of the character echoing Koki in real life. However, this is still a difficult character to play. In this 90-minute show, we could really feel all these emotions in this character, which make us feeling sorry for him, wanting to hug him, wishing him can find his happiness eventually.
However, just when we thought good things were happening to him, the story continued to go dark. There was a scene that KOKI felt betrayed and desperate. While the main story was carrying on in the front of the stage, KOKI stood alone in the back, without any dialogue, we saw him turned from suffering and hopeless to psychopathic. It was like the monster came out of him causing him to make mistakes that he could not take back.
In the end though, not sure if it was in reality or out of his imagination, we also saw KOKI finally met someone who brought him the light. This was also my favorite part of the story. The show was somehow difficult to watch because it was dark almost the whole time. However, there was a character with pure good who finally walked in KOKI's life. We finally saw him laughing from his heart. Did he finally get his happiness? The story ended with INKT's "Zutto" playing.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I really think Koki is such a good actor. You really cannot tell he hasn't done any acting in 10 years. Obviously, everyone in the play is a professional actor. Among them, Koki is like one of them. He said that his personal goal for this show is to make sure that he wouldn't use "because I haven't acted in 10 years" as an excuse for anything. His co-star also said that he felt Koki really is a star. He got better and better every day. He was better on stage than in the rehearsal.
Apparently, Koki was quite nervous during the first day. He said he couldn't really eat and he was under so much pressure that he had ulcers in his mouth XD However, I felt he was able to relax and enjoy more after the first day. Koki also said that he was into the character more and more. Sometimes he cried out of nowhere at home because he felt like the character. There was a scene that he had to choke a person to death. Koki said that he had to be careful not to really choke him because his character really hated that person XDDD
I was also very impressed by Hyouga. What he wrote and directed was something deep which I wasn't expected. I watched this play 9 times and every time I had a new discovery or a new explanation for the story. Also, I felt because he knows Koki the best. He really created the play that shows Koki's talent to the fullest. Besides acting, the opening song was 2U and the ending song was Zutto (both Koki's songs). There was a dance act in the beginning. I felt I saw so many parts of him on stage that I love.
Koki was on stage almost all the time for 90 minutes. Sometimes there were activities after the play such as photo sessions, talk shows and mini lives. I don't know how he could be so emotionally involved in this dark character for 90 minutes and turned right back to Koki Tanaka, the artist and started singing. Otsukaresamadesu! Really! I really hope through this play, there are more opportunities in the future for him to act in other things.
ps. For the last show today, as the captain of the play, Koki asked each co-star to say something at the end which is rare (usually only the captain talks). After the show, he even wrote messages on twitter to each co-star, one by one. Sometimes I felt he failed a lot in real life. If people only knew him from the news, it is easy to dislike him, just like the joker in the story. However, when people get to know him, seeing how sweet he is, it is hard not to like him or support him. I think it is also the reason that people who have worked with him never say bad things about him.