This 1959 Broadway adaptation by Fay and Michael Kanin ran for six months at the Music Box Theatre, New York, starring husband and wifeRod Steiger and Claire Bloom. The Kanins' production was nominated for three Tony awards. The Kanins' somewhat sentimental script sticks closely to the film, including elements added by Kurosawa that do not appear in Akutagawa's original short stories. The Kanins later went on to write the film screenplay for the Western The Outrage, which also credits Kurosawa and Akutagawa. The Outrage was one of several Westerns based on Kurosawa's films, most notably John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven, adapted from Kurosawa's historical epicSeven Samurai, and Sergio Leone's ground-breaking "Spaghetti Western" A Fistful of Dollars. The Kanins' script was also staged on U.S. television as a "Play of the Week". East West Players presented the first intimate staging of the Kanins' script, as their inaugural production in 1966. The show was revived two more times by EWP before retiring. More modern adaptations of Rashomonhave gone back to Akutagawa's original stories.
Ivor Benjamin
Ivor Benjamin's 1988 adaptation is from original translations by Jane Guaschi, then a language student at Sheffield University, U.K., and stays closer to the bleaker viewpoint of Akutagawa than the Kanins' version. This adaptation received its international premiere by , Ireland, 2005, for which the tour was nominated for two ESB/Irish Times 2005 Theatre Awards: Liam Halligan for Best Director and Chisato Yoshimi for Best Costume Design. The script has also been performed at Jackson's Lane Theatre, London, UK, the University of the Philippines, in Ashland, Oregon, USA and by Black Sheep Theatre Company, Rochester, New York, US.
Other adaptations
Rashomon – adaptation by Meena Natarajan and Luu Pham for Pangea World Theater. Rashomon – adaptation by Philippe Cherbonnier, directed by Kwong Loke, Kumiko Mendl and David K.S. Tse for Yellow Earth Theatre Company, London UK and tour,. Rashomon – a 1996 English language opera by London-based Argentine composer Alejandro Viñao, with libretto by Craig Raine.
