musical.today Tokyo, Japan
Tokyu Theatre Orb
1,972 seats
A musical house eleven floors up inside Shibuya Hikarie, built for exactly this: touring book musicals, in a tower above one of the busiest stations on earth.
The building
It stands on the site of the old Tokyu Bunka Kaikan and occupies six floors of the tower that replaced it, opening in July 2012 as the centrepiece of Shibuya Hikarie. The brief was unusually specific: a house built to receive Broadway productions, with an orchestra pit, a large stage lift, sixty lighting battens and movable lighting bridges.
The first show was West Side Story, the first Broadway staging invited to Japan in forty-eight years. Everything since has been the same kind of booking — imported musicals, playing a room designed around them.
Opening dates, capacities and architects on this page come from the theatre's own history pages and from Wikipedia.
Getting there
Shibuya Station, connected directly to Shibuya Hikarie.