Burnt Lemon are bringing their Untapped Award winning, total sellout Edinburgh Fringe hit musical Tokyo Rose to London for the first time with a strictly limited week-long run at New Diorama.
Towards the end of the second World War the Allied forces were tormented by an all-female Anglophone radio broadcast of Japanese propaganda. They attributed the broadcasts to a shady composite figure known only as Tokyo Rose.
In 1949, American satirist of Japanese ancestry Iva d’Aquino stands accused of treason in one of the most controversial trials in American history. She is accused of being the notorious Tokyo Rose: that infamous peddler of Axis propaganda on behalf of the Japanese government…but was she the villain she was made out to be?
Five female wartime disc jockeys spit piercing verse in a rap-packed musical broadcast telling the story of how, in times of strife, lies beget lies, propaganda begets propaganda and mistrust begets mistrust.
During the second World War these forces converged on one woman, who has occupied an uncertain place in history ever since.
In an era when, especially in the United States, women and migrants remain scapegoats, and the politicisation of media has created a proliferation of Fake News, Iva’s story serves as both a reminder and a warning of how political fanaticism is the enemy of truth.
Tokyo Rose is at The New Diorama Theatre 8th – 12th October 2019.
