No Longer Human: The Musical is a musical theatre adaptation of Osamu Dazai's novel "No Longer Human," with music composed by Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde, Scarlet Pimpernel, Dracula, Monte Cristo, Death Note, etc. God this man makes a lot of musical,) and Chinese lyrics by Ez-Ven, Huang Yajie, and Yang Jingyi, produced by RANSPACE.
It's an original musical in Chinese, so naturally I can't find much about it in English-speaking space, so I am making this post to yell into the void about this absolute masterpiece :) Linked below is a summary of the musical, as well as the entire soundtracks and their translated lyrics.
PLOT
The musical follows Dazai as he writes the novel No Longer Human, and the way his protagonist Yozo slowly takes on his own identity and grows as a person.
ACT 1
The musical opens with Osamu Dazai setting the scene for his novel No Longer Human, firstly describing the world (“No Longer Human”) and then introducing the protagonist Oba Yozo, who is an author surrogate for Dazai himself (“Birth/Meet Your Life.”)
We follow Yozo through his childhood, where he is scorned by his family (“The Family Portrait/Freak”) and abused by his old caretaker (“Flowers.”) While his father and brothers have a private discussion, on the other side of the door, Yozo begs his father for an answer to his suffering (“Below the Steps/At the Door.”) His older brother eventually emerges, revealing that Yozo is being sent to Tokyo to attend university.
(“Acting Class/Be a Clown” is a cut song wherein Dazai and Yozo meet for the first time on the train to Tokyo.)
Not used to the bustling atmosphere, Yozo feels overwhelmed (“One Hundred Views of Tokyo.”) Here, he meets Horiki, who points him to a communist meeting and convincing him to join the cause. The communists remain doubtful, but folded when Dazai and Yozo himself talk about using the money from his father to fund the operation (“Surprise Surprise.”)
("The Game/Be a Man" is a cut song wherein Dazai tries to warn Yozo to stay away from the communist group.)
When one of the meetings were raided by the police, all of the communists sell Yozo out to save their own skin (“Surprise Surprise reprise”) His brother bails Yozo out, then tells him his family is cutting him off. Feeling adrift and isolated, Yozo wonders to himself how to proceed (“A Dust Falls Into The Sea.”) Horiki reconnects with Yozo. Sensing his trouble, he takes Yozo to a hostess bar, advising him to indulge in hedonism (“A Creature Called Woman/Gold Digger.”) Here, Yozo connects with Tsuneko, who feels similarly lost in the world (“Lullaby/Moonbeam.”)
They enter a relationship, which earns both of them a lot of judgement from their social circle (“Cutting Remarks/Monsters.”) Faced with scorns, Yozo and Tsuneko decide to commit a double suicide by drowning. Wherein Tsuneko successfully kills herself, Yozo feels an obsession with life and fights against his faith, much to Dazai's surprise. Dazai reveals to Yozo that he is behind all of his suffering, that this is only a story, and taunts Yozo with a better life he could have led. Not deterred, Yozo affirms his will to be his own person, no longer constrained by Dazai's writing. (“Summer Fireworks + The Author.”)
ACT 2
Yozo survives the suicide attempt while Tsuneko died. His family pre-emptively celebrate his suicide. Even when Yozo comes back, they maintain that he should be buried (“Pity Party.”) Meanwhile, Dazai ponders over Yozo’s will to live, and the implication it has on himself (“Trapped.”) Yozo turns to alcohol to cope with the guilt and pain, following Horiki’s footstep (“I Don’t Care.”) On Yozo’s way home from the bar, he meets Yoshiko, whose innocence and believe touches him. (“The Amazing.”) Dazai is determined to get his novel “No Longer Human” published, and deals with the jeering and criticism from his peers (“Legends.”) Yozo pursues his passion for art, moves in together with Yoshiko, and fantasise about a future with her (“Welcome home.”)
Horiki shows up, expressing an interest in Yozo’s art. Accompanying Horiki is an art dealer who sexually assaulted Yoshiko (“Flowers Reprise.”) Horiki does not intervene, holding to his world view and defence himself in front of Yozo (“I Don’t Care reprise.”) The event divides Yozo and Yoshiko. Yoshiko, depressed, committed suicide by overdosing herself (“Sins of the World.”) Yozo wallows, and similarly overdoses himself. (“If I Had To Do It Again.”) He wakes up in an asylum in the aftermath, confused (“Pity Party reprise.”) There, he converses with the prisoners, who are characters from other work of Dazai, and Dazai himself. They tell Yozo their stories, the values of the stories, and that the weak also has the right to cry out. In the end, Yozo and Dazai sings about spring coming, despite it all. (“At the Door & NLH reprise + Fictional Spring.")
RECORDINGS
There's no full video bootleg of this musical that I can find (plenty of full audio though,) however there are a lot of performance clips, and other easter egg stages at the end of the musical that give you a good idea of the staging of many a-songs.
I'm currently subbing some of my favourite performances, and will be linking them below as I go along.
02 - Birth // Meet Your Life
03 - Freak // Family Portrait
05 - At the Door // Below the Steps
15 - Summer Fireworks & The Author
There's also two jazz concert from Liu Lingfei (Dazai, Yozo) in which he covered all the songs (except Surprise Surprise reprise,) which can be found here (uploading and translating in progress, currently 11/29 tracks done.)
what stage of baudrillard is it when all the shows and movies have boring as fuck underbaked half assed character dynamics and all the pr managers are marketing them by having the actors play twisted psychosexual torrid gay affair on the press junket instead
something about Toy Story toys is so strange to me. versions of animated characters based on real world toys, turned back into toys that are slightly different than the actual toys. slinky dog with a rubber spiral instead of a classic metal slinky. the porcelain bo peep and cloth woody turned into jointed plastic action figures. when toy story 4 came out and i saw a $30 talking action figure of forky, a character made out of a spork and a pipe cleaner, i stood in the walmart toy aisle staring at it like cameron from ferris bueller's day off staring at that painting in the art museum
can't believe people whined so much about the new cast members for the upcoming July performance run of NLH that Liu Lingfei had to step in and tell everyone to chill out
one really really really funny thing you realize when you are studying history is that people pretty much always desperately wanted to post online and would have been soooooo fucking crazy on here. i wish hildegard of bingen was oomf
you don't understand the only way to keep children safe is to isolate them from everyone except the people who are statistically most likely to abuse them
I had a nightmare that some people were rewiring the nerves of someone's body. Not like surgery--they had the person lying facedown on some kind of bed or gurney, and the people had torn the nervous system out of the body completely and propped it up on and suspended it from racks they placed over the body, so they could get the nerves back into the shapes they were supposed to be, out in the open where they could see them. It was like the damage was so complete they had to put the nerves back into shape like an artistic model, like they really were just splicing and bending a wire frame.
They weren't doctors, though. The second guy didn't even know what he was doing at all! They were each working on a different piece, and he was in charge of the mouth. He knew he wouldn't be able to do it right, though, and that this person would never be able to feel, even move their mouth again. So instead, he was determined that that one pose the mouth was going to be permanently fixed in would be the most beautiful smile he could create. He was sweating, working tensely, chanting to himself "You can't go wrong with a picture-perfect smile! You can't go wrong with a picture-perfect smile!! You can't go wrong with a picture-perfect smile!!!"
I was jolted awake when I thought I felt someone moving the nerves on the backs of my knees
