Saturday, February 07, 2015

Yamashita Tomohisa to star in TBS Spring 2015 drama "Algernon ni Hanataba wo"

Yamashita Tomohisa will be starring in the TBS Spring 2015 drama "Algernon ni Hanataba wo" (Flowers for Algernon) which will begin its run from April in the Fridays 10pm timeslot. The drama which is based on the same-titled 1959 novel by the late Daniel Keyes who passed away in June last year, features Yamashita as a 28-year-old man named Shiratori Sakuto working at a florist who has the intelligence of a 6-year-old but miraculously becomes a genius after an operation. However, as a result of this, Sakuto gets caught in a dilemma due to the problems presented by the gap between his originally innocent nature and new-found intelligence because he starts to see everyone as being inferior to him and experiences the loneliness of being isolated. The drama's script will be supervised by Nojima Shinji who is known for his past hits such as "Koukou Kyoushi".

In preparation for his role, Yamashita spent a day at a labour support centre for the intellectually-challenged where he filled balloons into boxes with the employees there and had lunch with them. Yamashita also watched the movie adaptations in 1968 and 2006 and is trying to read the original novel in English so as to understand his role better.

There was an earlier drama adaptation of the same novel made by FujiTV in 2002 which featured Yusuke Santa Maria as the lead and a stage play made in 2012 by Gekidan Caramel Box.

Source: Sanspo

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