photo: Takahiro WatanabeOne of the international entrants in the Lincoln Center Festival this summer is a Japanese production of a play written by Hisashi Inoue, directed by Yukio Ninagawa. It’s a response to a Japanese myth about a fight between two samurai – Musashi being the victor. The one-to-one battle forms the brief prelude to the contemporary play, Musashi spoken in Japanese with English supertitles.
After the introductory fight, there’s a blackout, and then the new play begins. The opening is a delight. Trees glide down the stage and the modules of a wooden temple slide into place. A gorgeous set - and a rare moment of kinetic beauty as the foliage wanders and then finds its place. The set remains for the rest of the play, and when the occasion demands, those trees tremble and rustle - it’s marvelous. All of nature is party to the drama.
The action is set 2,200 days after the classic fight. We find Musashi and a small group of Buddhists about devote themselves to a three-day retreat at the temple – as we so often take ourselves off to the woods for re-creation. Musashi’s rival shows up, and the two foes agree to settle the old score in three days – on Genji Hill.
They both stay for the retreat, vowing to keep away from each other for the duration. The story revolves around the attempts the other retreatants make to deflect the fight. Finally the supernatural is revealed, and we learn why the trees have been rustling.
There are references throughout to the Noh, Japan’s classical drama. One character is a Noh playwright who sings the Noh when he’s excited, and another sings a Noh song that might come out of one of its 14th-century scripts.
The acting is meticulously kept in a mode between realism and classic Noh stylization. When the moment is right, the actors take on traditional gestures and poses. They combine the two established styles and create a style specific to the play. The balance is maintained with knife-point precision. It’s brilliant, a superb, transparent application of modernism.
But one piece of action doesn’t lead to another and form a plot in this script. At three-and-a-half hours, Musashi is beautiful but dull.
Sometimes a wonderful flute et al back up the visuals unobtrusively, but then the world of the play is violated by a tango played on an accordion. An accordion, thank you! Whatever effect this music has on Japanese audiences, for us it breaks the mesmerizing stylistic spell. As the retreatants would say, “Buddha preserve us!”
- Steve Capra
July 2010
Other reviews:
New York Times
The Village Voice
New York Post
Back Stage
