'Your Lie in April' composer Frank Wildhorn on bringing manga to the West End

Composer Frank Wildhorn has turned his hand to Your Lie in April, a heartbreaking story about a piano prodigy who loses his ability to play after his mother’s death.

“I didn’t even know what ‘manga’ was,” chuckles American composer Frank Wildhorn as he recalls being asked to write a show inspired by the Japanese comic book form. It’s a pretty extraordinary admission from the man who has since become a superstar in Japan and South Korea thanks to his manga musicals, Death Note and Your Lie in April – the latter of which is now playing in the West End.

It was a decade ago that the producers of Death Note asked Wildhorn – who has homes in Japan (where his actress wife Yoka Wao is celebrated), New York and Hawaii – to take the manga home and have a look at it. “So I did, and it’s an amazing story,” Wildhorn recalls. “I told my oldest son Justin and he said ‘Dad, this is so much cooler than what you do in New York. You need to say yes immediately.’”

Following the huge success of his subsequent Death Note musical, which premiered in Tokyo in 2015 and received a concert staging at the London Palladium last year (Wildhorn teases that there’s big news to come about a full run soon), it’s hardly surprising that a second manga musical followed. Justin again had the hot tip. “I said ‘What should Dad do next?’ and he said ‘Go on Netflix, watch the anime series of Your Lie in April, and when you’ve finished crying, call me.’”

Wildhorn was indeed floored by Naoshi Arakawa’s wrenchingly emotional tale, which sees a teenage piano prodigy, Kosei, suffering a breakdown after his mother dies. A meeting with a fellow gifted teen, free-spirited violinist Kaori, brings him back to music – although serious illness threatens their budding relationship.

“The truth is I saw it and I went to the piano, and I wrote almost the entire score in a weekend,” reveals Wildhorn. “Writing for me is visceral, it’s about heart and soul, and this moved me so deeply that 72 hours later there were 22 songs.” The musical opened in Tokyo in 2022, to great acclaim.

Your Lie in April resonated with Wildhorn as a musician in particular. “The whole thing is a love letter to music,” he says. “It’s the healing power of music, it’s the power of music to create moments and therefore memories in our life, it’s music as a bridge between here and the ever after, and between childhood and adulthood.

“Of course I fell in love with that right away, and also with the idea of creating a score that can introduce great classical music to a younger audience. That’s a big deal to me.” Wildhorn clarifies that Your Lie in April has a youthful pop score, because it revolves around teenagers, but it also features the world of competitive classical music. “That means it’s got Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Debussy. To write a pop/R&B ballad and put ‘Clair de Lune’ in the middle of it, that was beyond fun.”

It’s exactly the sort of challenge that the 65-year-old Wildhorn, who calls his musical background as “eclectic as eclectic can be”, relishes. Born in Harlem and raised in Florida, he didn’t grow up a “theatre geek”, he confesses, but a jock. “Then someone said ‘You can meet girls another way’, and music took over my life.” Self-taught, he was strongly influenced by the “older American jazz guys who let me play with them”, as well as artists ranging from Rachmaninoff and Puccini to The Beatles and Stevie Wonder.

“When I got into theatre I didn’t know the rules,” he recalls. “Thank god I had a beautiful mentor in the great Leslie Bricusse [the British composer known for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Victor/Victoria and Bond theme ‘Goldfinger’]. He taught me so much, but at the same time he said ‘Don’t lose what’s special about you.’

“In those days,” Wildhorn continues, “I was working with a music publisher, and if people didn’t choose my songs to record, my kids weren’t going to eat.” So he did the same for his first musical Jekyll & Hyde, writing songs that told the story, but also served as breakout hits.

He wasn’t prepared for the snobbery of many in the industry towards his so-called pop musicals, but he’s certainly had the last laugh. His shows, which include recent UK hit Bonnie & Clyde, have played around the world, and he galvanised the next generation. “[Composers] invite me to opening night of their shows, saying ‘If I hadn’t seen Jekyll & Hyde growing up, I wouldn’t have done this.’”

When Wildhorn wrote for artists like Whitney Houston, he aimed for the demographic “8 to 80”: music for everyone. The same applies, he believes, to Your Lie in April. “You can bring your kids and bring your mother. It’s about family, love, passion, how to deal with illness and grief. These are universal themes and the characters are really relatable.” Musical theatre is also the perfect form given that “the stakes are so high: that’s why they have to sing,” notes Wildhorn.

This is his third successful collaboration with director Nick Winston, following Bonnie & Clyde and Death Note – all beginning as concerts. Even so, Wildhorn is astonished that Your Lie in April has graduated from to a full run already. But the concert (which, appropriately, took place in April) proved that they were on the right track, he says, not least that it truly affected audiences. “Grizzled veterans of the entertainment business were crying at the end. This show touches people.”

Wildhorn is especially glad that they decided not to move the story to a western city. Instead, it showcases a talented cast of Asian origin, including Zheng Xi Yong, Mia Kobayashi, Rachel Clare Chan, Dean John-Wilson, and Lucy Park. “My wife says that this story has the spirit of Japan,” adds Wildhorn. “I’m excited that young Asian kids will come see it and find new heroes, or feel they can perform too. If you can open those doors, that’s a wonderful thing.”

Book Your Lie in April tickets on London Theatre.

Photo credit: composer Frank Wildhorn. Inset: Your Lie in April. (Photos courtesy of production)