New Musical for Hitomi

September 19th, 2007 by Rinoa · 1 Comment

Hitomi Shimatani

After a successful stage performance in the musical ” Anne of Green Gables” as Anne, Hitomi Shimatani immediately resumed with her singing career, with the release of her 26th single “Shinku/Ai no Uta”. However her performance did not go unnoticed and luckily this led Hitomi to be chosen to star in yet another musical.

A month after this stage performance the media has already announced yet another musical role for Hitomi. It has been decided that Hitomi Shimatani and Ranran Suzuki are set to play a double starring role at the musical “Girl Friends”. The performances are scheduled to start on January 25th until February 3rd, at Tokyo, the Stage Galaxy Theater of Tenno.

The musical will contain the songs of the legendary singer-songwriter Yumi Matsutouya. Yuming’s hit songs shall be performed on stage, amounting to around thirty songs. It happened that Yuming happened to attend in the musical “Anne of Green Gables” in August and she was so impressed that she shed tears while watching her performance.

This will be Ranran’s first time co-starring. The plot will focus on two childhood friends, their loves and friendship. Unlike the conventional musicals, the main feature will consist of song parts. Thus the story will be based on lyrics. For this reason the singing ability and power of expression became an important criteria for the selection of the actors. Ranran has abundant experience from the Broadway work “Pippin”, scheduled on October, while Hitomi is well known for her polished vocals.

While this performance will build on the same musical set in December 2006, with Tomomi Kahara as the main personality, the upcoming musical is planned to be on a bigger scale. The accommodation number is set to be double the scale of last year’s, in Hakuhinkan Theater. Due to the high expectations concerning the two starring roles the Galaxy Theater was chosen.

Hitomi is overjoyed at the chance to sing Matsutoya’s music and admits that she has been listening to her music since she was young. Although she feels Yuming’s musical pieces are wonderful, she wants to train rigidly so that she can be able express her role’s personality well, because she feels that this does not depend only on the musical piece but on her efforts as well.

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