Hideki Sukenari writes in Japan's The Yomiuri Shimbun of April 30, 2014:
Lady Bess is a play based on the life of Elizabeth I who laid the foundation of the British Empire. This bold and imaginative production turns the European historical drama not too familiar in Japan into a coming-of-age story of a young girl that resonates with the Japanese audience. That which attracts attention on the stage are the two huge astronomical clocks. They are placed in the background and on the floor, looking as though they possess a great power to decide the destiny of people. In this mysterious setting, the girl accepts her fate as the heir to the throne and then sets out to walk the path of life on her own. This whole process of her extraordinary girlhood evolves with varied music having a Celtic flavor that is evocative of the time and the region.
It is Kunze's favorite style of play in which fictional characters leave their mark in the mind of lead characters. In "Lady Bess," a young minstrel named Blake takes such role. The drama centers on the
love story between Bess and the young poet, and illustrates how the princess grows up facing hatred of Queen Mary I, her older half-sister, seeking wisdom of her tutor Ascham and getting impressed by the wits of Prince Philip of Spain. This extraordinary play unfolds with the dynamic direction effectively using a slanted revolving stage.
The Asahi Shimbun' drama critic, Michie Amano, wrote on April 24, 2014:
"Lady Bess" is a musical by Michael Kunze (book/lyrics), Sylvester Levay (music) and Shuichiro Koike (director/lyrics translation/additional translation). This production makes a good match with "Elisabeth," another masterpiece by the same three-man team. The Empress of Austria of the 19th century becomes obsessed with Death in "Elisabeth," while in "Lady Bess," Princess Bess gets through life's challenges and grows up as Kat, her governess (Mayo Suzukaze), sings in "Growing up." Although the two storylines are the exact opposites of each other, they share the same central theme.
The heroines wished to live free. However, they lost their freedom in exchange of growth, which brought them a great sorrow. This sadness underlies these two stories.
Bess (double-cast by Mari Hanafusa and Aya Hirano) is encouraged by her tutor Ascham (Kanji Ishimaru and Yuichiro Yamaguchi) and endures persecution by Mary I of England (Yuki Mirai and Rie Yoshizawa). Hanafusa excellently personifies the proud character who relies on herself. Nonetheless, Bess's biggest challenge is more closely associated with her heart, in other words, the romance with Robin the minstrel (Ikusaburo Yamazaki and Kazuki Kato). Like Romeo in "Romeo and Juliet," Robin
dares to sneak into her bedroom and invites her on a wandering journey. However, Queen Mary dies at that very moment and an emissary from the palace brings her a message that summons her to the crowning. The spirit of her mother Anne (Miou Kazune) who died a tragic death watches her over just like the ghost of the former king in "Hamlet." A number of citations from the works of Shakespeare can be found in this drama. Bess sings a duet of "My Heart Belongs to You" with Robin and abandons
her love, thereby putting an end to her girlhood. "I will never have love again." In this scene Hirano acutely portrays Bess's pathos. The play develops with quite a few excellent pieces of music that grab the listeners' attention.
"Lady Bess" is being performed at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo until 24th May and then will go on tour in Osaka, Fukuoka and Nagoya.
"Never use the word, 'very.' It is the weakest word in the English language; doesn't mean anything. If you feel the urge of 'very' coming on, just write the word, 'damn,' in the place of 'very.' The editor will strike out the word, 'damn,' and you will have a good sentence."
Two men are camping out when a big grizzly bear walks into the campsite. One of the men drops to the ground and starts hurriedly putting on his running shoes. His friend says, "You think by putting on your running shoes, you're going to be able to outrun that bear?" 
In February 2011 the American urban planner Candy Chang turned the wall of an abandoned house in New Orleans into an enormous blackboard. She stenciled the words "Before I die, I want to..." at the top of the wall and provided the chalk passers-by needed to complete the sentence. Was the installation ignored, vandalized or ridiculed? No. People filled it in no time with hundreds of serious inscriptions - hopes, dreams, reflections. Word spread, and the wall became a tourist attraction. By now there are hundreds of similar installations in many cities. Obviously that "Before I die..." is a sentence many of us long to complete.
"The literary novel as an art work and a narrative art form central to our culture is indeed dying before our eyes. Let me refine my terms: I do not mean narrative prose fiction tout court is dying – the kidult boywizardsroman and the soft sadomasochistic porn fantasy are clearly in rude good health. And nor do I mean that serious novels will either cease to be written or read. But what is already no longer the case is the situation that obtained when I was a young man. In the early 1980s, and I would argue throughout the second half of the last century, the literary novel was perceived to be the prince of art forms, the cultural capstone and the apogee of creative endeavour. The capability words have when arranged sequentially to both mimic the free flow of human thought and investigate the physical expressions and interactions of thinking subjects; the way they may be shaped into a believable simulacrum of either the commonsensical world, or any number of invented ones; and the capability of the extended prose form itself, which, unlike any other art form, is able to enact self-analysis, to describe other aesthetic modes and even mimic them. All this led to a general acknowledgment: the novel was the true Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk… I believe the serious novel will continue to be written and read, but it will be an art form on a par with easel painting or classical music: confined to a defined social and demographic group, requiring a degree of subsidy, a subject for historical scholarship rather than public discourse. The current resistance of a lot of the literate public to difficulty in the form is only a subconscious response to having a moribund message pushed at them. As a practising novelist, do I feel depressed about this? No, not particularly, except on those occasions when I breathe in too deeply and choke on my own decadence. I've no intention of writing fictions in the form of tweets or text messages – nor do I see my future in computer-games design. My apprenticeship as a novelist has lasted a long time now, and I still cherish hopes of eventually qualifying. Besides, as the possessor of a Gutenberg mind, it is quite impossible for me to foretell what the new dominant narrative art form will be – if, that is, there is to be one at all."
