In some ways, this is less a review and more some reflections on the international transportation of theatre. My only previous exposure to the Ninagawa company has been their sumptuous productions of Shakespeare’s Pericles and Twelfth Night (the latter by way of Shochiku Grand Kabuki). Watching these offered a fascinating mirror – literally in the case of Twelfth Night which opened with the audience looking at their reflection – where one could view Shakespeare through the prism of another culture. Without getting into the debate on intercultural theatre, I will say that the familiarity of the plays in question allowed me to feel that there was some solid ground on which I could legitimately respond. In contrast, the context of Yukio Ninagawa’s production of Hisashi Inoue’s Musashi is wholly unfamiliar to me and I'm in the anti-Wildean position of having nothing to declare but my ignorance at these cultural customs.
Made popular in a 1930s serialisation by Eiji Yoshikawa, the legendary duel in Japanese history between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirō in 1612 is reimagined in Inoue's script as a beginning, not an end. Seeking an alternative answer than death as the only possible conclusion to cycles of violence, Inoue allows Kojirō to survive the duel. Six years later, the two samurai meet at a wooden temple-cum-Noh stage, and urged by the temple residents, agree to meditate on their conflict for three days before acting on it. These spiritual guides include the Shogun's adviser, who breaks out into Noh song when excited, the patroness whose father was murdered over the results of a tea-guessing competition, and an old temple dancer with region-specific names, who reenacts a kyogen prayer dance from former days. To the ghost of an old octopus.
So, a production done entirely in Japanese, about a Japanese myth, based in Japanese theatrical traditions with some very specific Japanese geographical and culinary references - the cultural layers and levels are many and complicated. And I was barely able to interpret any of them. For example, was I meant to know or suspect all along what the stone signpost meant, or was that as much a surprise to members of the audience better versed than me in Japanese culture? I happened to read my programme in the interval and discovered that it was a kekkai-seki (of course!), which, once you know what it is, rather gives the game away for how things will pan out. Such a small thing - whether or not a stone has an assumed meaning - but one that fundamentally leads to two very different productions. In one, the stone operates as a subtle but revealing indicator of what's to come, and armed with this foreknowledge, leads you to watch the events of the play with one eye on how they fit into the ending. In the latter, the stone is unreadable as a symbol to the majority and the final twist is unexpected, coming out of nowhere.
There's something about this issue of interpretation and the tools that a reviewer has available to them with which to judge foreign theatre. On the surface, the surtitles are the most obvious interpretative mechanism and do a lot of the work for a non-Japanese speaker. But when one character has been speaking for close to 45 seconds and the surtitles continue to read "Yes, I agree" (no joke), then one wonders what exactly is lost in translation. This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it. But given my admitted struggle with, let's call it the textual side of the production, I have to ask myself how exactly I was forming a response to the production. I think my fear is that by being unable to participate in the typical interpretative process, theatre of this nature is reduced to exotic spectacle, with all the potentially negative connotations of post-colonialism that has. These my be my own narrow-minded politically correct fears. Yet the fact that the most entertaining moment of the evening for me was a sequence of samurai training comically performed to the familiar strains of tango music seems to be further ammunition for these anxieties.
Tickets:
£12, Upper Circle. The strength of Ninagawa’s production is always his stunning visuals, and viewing them from the upper circle does perhaps give a greater sense of the scale of them in this production than if viewed up close. The rustling bamboo disappears up into the heights of the Barbican stage, but also forces much of the action to the front and centre of the stage with only very occasional lapses of audibility. Which is pretty good going for the cheap seats, really.
Programme:
£3.50
Total Cost:
£15.50
Musashi plays at the Barbican until 8 May. Tickets £10-40. Visit www.barbican.org.uk or call 020 7638 8891 for more information.
So, a production done entirely in Japanese, about a Japanese myth, based in Japanese theatrical traditions with some very specific Japanese geographical and culinary references - the cultural layers and levels are many and complicated. And I was barely able to interpret any of them. For example, was I meant to know or suspect all along what the stone signpost meant, or was that as much a surprise to members of the audience better versed than me in Japanese culture? I happened to read my programme in the interval and discovered that it was a kekkai-seki (of course!), which, once you know what it is, rather gives the game away for how things will pan out. Such a small thing - whether or not a stone has an assumed meaning - but one that fundamentally leads to two very different productions. In one, the stone operates as a subtle but revealing indicator of what's to come, and armed with this foreknowledge, leads you to watch the events of the play with one eye on how they fit into the ending. In the latter, the stone is unreadable as a symbol to the majority and the final twist is unexpected, coming out of nowhere.
There's something about this issue of interpretation and the tools that a reviewer has available to them with which to judge foreign theatre. On the surface, the surtitles are the most obvious interpretative mechanism and do a lot of the work for a non-Japanese speaker. But when one character has been speaking for close to 45 seconds and the surtitles continue to read "Yes, I agree" (no joke), then one wonders what exactly is lost in translation. This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it. But given my admitted struggle with, let's call it the textual side of the production, I have to ask myself how exactly I was forming a response to the production. I think my fear is that by being unable to participate in the typical interpretative process, theatre of this nature is reduced to exotic spectacle, with all the potentially negative connotations of post-colonialism that has. These my be my own narrow-minded politically correct fears. Yet the fact that the most entertaining moment of the evening for me was a sequence of samurai training comically performed to the familiar strains of tango music seems to be further ammunition for these anxieties.
Tickets:
£12, Upper Circle. The strength of Ninagawa’s production is always his stunning visuals, and viewing them from the upper circle does perhaps give a greater sense of the scale of them in this production than if viewed up close. The rustling bamboo disappears up into the heights of the Barbican stage, but also forces much of the action to the front and centre of the stage with only very occasional lapses of audibility. Which is pretty good going for the cheap seats, really.
Programme:
£3.50
Total Cost:
£15.50
Musashi plays at the Barbican until 8 May. Tickets £10-40. Visit www.barbican.org.uk or call 020 7638 8891 for more information.
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