Sorry for the wait, but here comes the commentary!

I had seen the previous ones on DVD, not live. I also hadn't read the books or summaries yet, as I wanted to experience the play first as was the case with all of the Showa stories for me. Since this was the last play, I held nothing back and went a total of six times: Sun, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat matinee and the final Sunday. I had crazy good luck with the last two, as I won both of them from the lottery at the door after having failed to buy them from the normal sales.

Anyway, on to the play itself:

The play opens with Naoe and Minako on the train on their way to Kumamoto. There's a flashback of Kagetora talking with Minako, and then him ordering Naoe to protect him. Naoe monologues a bit about wanting to kill her, but stops when he hears Kagetora's voice in his head and breaks out laughing. A great start for a play with countless of Naoe's breakdowns.

Hiramaki does an amazing job in this play as Naoe. His descent to madness works really well, from small gestures of his hands, the cold tones of his voice, all the way to the explosive, crazy monologues. The sad parts are very, very sad. The scene where he talks with Minako before the rape (also shown briefly before fade to black) is great, his breakdown when talking about the incident with Haruie super intense, and the talk with Nobunaga made me hold my breath every time. There were some changes between one day to another with how he delivered his lines, but I at least liked all of them. 

Tomita as Kagetora is of course great, as usual. He too had some fluctuation as to just how intense he was each day, and I liked some days more than others, but I think it will be amazing anyway.

I actually don't know which one of the performances is ending up on the DVD - in my other fandom it's always the last one, but I didn't see any cameras at the front so I don't know. No major mistakes happened in any of the performances I saw, but almost everyone had some tiny thing: like one uncertain line, someone in the audience coughing at a bad time, an actor fumbling with a sword or that kind of thing. If I had to chooce, I might choose the last performance, as the intensity seemed to be at it's highest and the scene where Kagetora came to get Naoe back from Oda had the most chemistry. There are not so many scenes with Naoe and Kagetora together in this performance, so that part was important.

More appreciation for the actors:- Nagahide. He had great attitude, and I felt his rants at all the craziness around him were quite understandable.- Yagira-san. Very heart warming and uncomplicated, and the actor seemed genuinely happy to play this role.- Nobunaga. Amazing use of voice, maybe more mature in his overall delivery of the character than before.- Tetsuji as Nobunaga. I was really surprised how well he pulled this off.

Basically I was happy with everyone's performance, no complaints.

As to how things went with Minako. As I mentioned, the rape happens, sometime after the halfway of first half. I saw there was some discussion as to how this was handled in the books, but at least here I didn't feel it was glossed over too badly. She is clearly shocked, and locks herself off for several days, causing Yagira-san to guess what happened and really yell at Naoe about it. The scene where she tells Naoe she just wants to forget about it is really emotional both from her and Naoe, also thanks to the great music that the play in that part.

Then, as we approach the latter parts of the second half, we have Kagetora's soul forced into Minako's body. People were asking for spoilers, so here goes!At first, it's only Onogawa who's moving and speaking as Kagetora, but very soon Tomita rises up, and they deliver the major lines about never forgiving Naoe together. The scene fades to black.Later, we have Onogawa alone on the stage as Kagetora, struggling as he dwells on the fact of what happened. But again, Tomita walks in, and they deliver their lines about Minako's memories in turns. They have a short bit of talking as Kagetora and Minako, with Kagetora apologising to her and Minako telling him his wish will come true.

From here on, it's back to Tomita acting Kagetora. As far as I can see, nothing is done to his looks - maybe in one scene I thought his hair looked as if it was more traditionally feminine than in some scenes, but it's nothing major. During the fighting at the end, Minako makes one very short appearrance as Kagetora, wearing a short wig and the same clothes as Kagetora (black pants and leather jacket).

As for my own take on this, I think Onogawa was doing a good job with the limited moments that she had as Kagetora. My preference would have been to have more of her acting this part, even though at the same time I find it difficult to complain as Tomita is amazing here as well, whether it was him holding his hand on his stomach when there was talk about Naoe's baby, or the swordmanship at the end - it seemed like in a female body he became even more brutal about it. (I practice iaido and won't go into how realistic any of it was, but it looked really good.)

One more spoiler for the very end. After Kagetora's absolutely fantastic scene with Kenshin and some picture projections of the changing Tokyo, we come to Heisei era. Hiramaki enters the stage as Tachibana Yoshiaki. He doesn't say anything, just looks around. Then, Tomita comes in as Ougi Takaya. He calls out to Naoe, telling him to wait. Cherry blossoms fall from the sky, and the play is over.

Overall, I loved this performance. Everyone did such a good job, it was exciting and heartbreaking and interesting. Seeing it six times was not one time too many. I really look forward to the DVD, going through some lines with a dictionary, and seeing everything more clearly. One of the seats that I had was on the aisle so I could see both Tomita and Hiramaki from really close for a very brief moment in one of the performances, and I did look at some details with binoculars on some shows as well. At least it was all amazing seen live, and I really hope it carries over on the DVD.I'll have to stop here for now, but I'll continue later about some details about the last performance, the speeches and about the audience. Feel free to ask if there's anything you're curious about. Katinka was there too, so I think she will share here impressions as well! (Thanks again, it was nice to meet, talk, and queue for the day of tickets together!)

I still can't believe Mirage is over now, even though I did cry my fair share about it during the last performance.