Complicité’s last couple of
productions were widely admired but condemned by some for becoming so
technology-heavy that the essential “liveness” of theatre was
sacrificed. It is therefore in strong contrast to
The Elephant Vanishes (2003-04)
that Simon McBurney’s second co-production with the Setagaya Public
Theatre of Tokyo concentrates on a much sparer, more elegant,
classically Japanese aesthetic in his staging.
One of the two texts by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki on which the piece is
based, the aesthetic essay
In Praise
Of Shadows, guides McBurney’s approach here both literally and
metaphorically. Lighting is used only where and as far as is absolutely
necessary to show proceedings onstage (apart from a shockingly unsubtle
closing tableau in which the audience is bombarded with white light),
and ambiguities and uncertainties in the story, derived from Tanizaki’s
A Portrait Of Shunkin (both
books published 1933) are allowed to stand and resonate with us.
The latter proto-Borgesian text presents a fictitious life as factual
biography, chronicling the life of a 19th century female
shamisen player, Shunkin, blinded
in childhood, and her complex loving/violent relationship with her
servant and pupil Sasuke. The two are obsessed with one another their
whole lives long, to the extent that Sasuke eventually blinds himself
so that he may the more fully inhabit Shunkin’s world. The cruelty and
sadism in their personal bond is echoed and contrasted with motifs of
freedom and confinement: a caged lark, rituals of dressing, spatial
limitations defined by the
tatami
mats and
sotoba grave-posts
which constitute virtually the entire set as they are manipulated into
various configurations.
Even the portrayal of character is circumscribed: Sasuke is represented
at various ages by three actors from the ten-strong Japanese cast,
Shunkin at first by a child-sized puppet, then by a masked actress
manipulated
like a puppet;
briefly she gains her own face, as it were, before being swathed in
bandages. More or less naturalistic performances abut upon with
formalistic use of classical Japanese stage conventions. For much of
the 110-minute performance, part of me remained worried that, although
consummately executed, this might none the less be little more than
exotica. However, its tonal and thematic concerns are powerfully
communicated, and the formalism contrasts tellingly with a lack of
definition which is above all human and living.
Written for the Financial
Times.