[Translation: The sun will come out tomorrow]
Where do they find the Japanese girls which such red, curly hair?
Indeed, Annie is just as perky in Japan as anywhere else. I saw this advertisement in my subway station. All the major musicals play in Japan as well. Since I’ve been here I’ve noticed Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Aida, Annie, The Lion King, and others I’ve forgotten. I haven’t gone to see any of them as they are all in Japanese. At first I thought it was crazy that they shouldn’t be in their original language, and then I realized how much I liked Les Miserables. In English. Of course, the original Boublil & Schonberg lyrics were in French, although the English version is considered by the lyricists to stand alone.
The English language version, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer and additional material by James Fenton, was substantially expanded and reworked from a literal translation by Siobhan Bracke of the original Paris version, in particular adding a prologue to tell Jean Valjean’s back story. Kretzmer’s work is not a direct “translation” of the French, a term that Kretzmer refuses to use. A third of the English lyrics were a rough translation, another third were adapted from the French lyrics and the final third consisted of new material.