Ensemble Photo Credit: Alex Brenner.
Simon Jenner, October 31st 2024
Nagasaki early August 1945 isn’t the most obvious setting for a title like Hideki Noda’s Love in Action directed by him at the Sadler’s Wells till November 2nd. Nor perhaps even more for a free adaptation of Dostoevsky’s 1880 masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov: where the vicious patriarch is murdered, but by which son? NODA MAP return to London with a work whose action spins on the son with whom the father shared an obsession: Grushenka. This production though is spectacular, idiomatic and devastating.
As drama there’s a wavelength easy to attune in this vast panoramic satire edging through pantomime spectacle into something else. Presentation is both highly stylised with intense visuals, and declamatory storytelling. It’s thus not so far away from the (only slightly more) intimate feel of Chiten Theatre ‘s production of Osamu Dazai’s Goodbye at the Coronet in March.
Beyond the basic plot of three (in reality four) half-brothers of a fireworks-making dynasty, there’s gleeful wit in posting a Russian contingent (one of whom is Grushenka’s former lover). Russia till August 8th was neutral, but for political reasons declared war. There’s the still greater irony – and this is a reason for situating the plot at Nagasaki – that many of the population were Christian. Profoundly anti-war they were also persecuted for it and for “praying to the enemy’s God” as Noda puts it. Since Christianity is a major theme in Karamazov, it fits with a shivery touch.
Ensemble Photo Credit: Alex Brenner.
There’s more though as Noda’s dialogue (all surtitles crisply realised by Susan Hingley and Jo Allan) skirls round such one-liners as “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” or “Streetcar Named Desire” all postwar references and bends with Marihiko Hara’s music (and Junko Fujimoto’s hug of sound design). Here pop music fuses with contemporary Japanese music and even a touch of Japanese thrash metal.
Noda himself takes a couple of parts, and is everywhere present. Describing the visuals, even images themselves do scant justice to the breathtaking use of colour and emblems.
Karamatsu Tomitaro (Jun Matsumoto) is arraigned as the murderer of his father. It’s clear he didn’t do it but feels loaded with guilt. Matsumoto takes on though other forms of guilt, and even in this frenetically-paced work shows something of pathos, and unforgivable knowledge.
But Tomitaro’s also a crack fireworks maker and half-brother Karamatsu Iwan (Eita Nagayama) has other ideas. He just happens to be a nuclear scientist and the theft of some uranium (by the Russians who keep accidentally leaking their war plans?) is just one of those throwaway notions where the arms-race take place under the shadow of some uranium about to fall. You didn’t know Nagasaki was developing an atom bomb of its own, with frequent references to Kamikazi by Iwan? Don’t worry. Plutonium’s so next-stage.
Another plot spins on the misreporting of Hiroshima’s bomb not having been nuclear and little damage reported. News travels slow with censorship and a lack of livestreaming. Yet another towards the end is well known: that the bombing of Nagasaki was almost accidental. Cloud prevented the dockyards being bombed, and it was a tertiary target.
Some might find just too much to take in and at two hours 18 minutes straight through it’s a stretch. But is is unique, unforgettable and finally overwhelming.
There’s fine work from Masami Nagasawa playing the priest-brother Karamatsu Ariyoshi and the slinky self-delighting courtesan Grushenka, from noble wife Ubukaa Rina (Nozomi Muraoka), the wild hostess Madam Russasky (Nobue Iketani), the quizzical Kure Goriki (Kazushige Komatsu).
More to the fore are the roles of Shiranu Katsuzo, pragmatic defence lawyer , also Reverend Father taken by Hideki Noda himself. And his opposite in every way Naoto Takenaka who gleefully flips between the repulsive and towering patriatch Karamatsu Hyodod, and the principled, even Christian Prosecutor Kugatachi for whom Katsuzo has the greatest respect. Sumida Jako, Hyodo’s illegitimate son who idolized Iwan hasn’t been assigned.
Ensemble Photo Credit: Alex Brenner.
Yukio Horio’s design invokes a black backdrop with an arch bridge receding. Taiki Ueda’s projection design is used sparingly but wait for the moment when the B29 crew wheel and float on simple office chairs against a grey-green backdrop. The effect is haunting and horribly magical.
It’s essentially a dark playground on which intense colours including Kodue Hibino’s quick-change costumes dance, Motoi Hattori and Makoto Kitazaw’s lighting refracts: often bright, it gulphs surprising shadows and at one point the stage is pitched black. Shigehiro Ide’s choreography takes the normal exaggerations of what we think we know as Japanese theatre and crosses it with Broadway musical, modern dance and bursts of Russian Cossack. Eri Akamatsu’s hair and make-up deserve a shout, particularly for the multi-roling,
The frantically hard-working ensemble are worth praising: Yuga Akiyama, Shiori Ishikawa, Honoka Kanemitsu, Masanori Kikuzawa, Taketo Kubota, Yoko Goto, Ayaka Kondo, Yuji Shirakura, Masahiko Shirota, Claud Haschijoin, Ayaka Hikima, Natsumi Mase, Yuta Matoba, Sawaka Minaguchi, Masakazu Morita, Tomohiro Yoshida, Sojin Lee.
This production alters not just our perspective on Nagasaki, but in a switchback of Russian, Japanese, even American cultures is something of a fission. Noda’s metaphor blazes with spectacle and irony. A must-see.
Written and directed by Hideki Noda, Set Design Yukio Horio, Lighting Design Motoi Hattori & Makoto Kitazawa, Costume Design Kodue Hibino Music Marihiko Hara, Sound Design Junko Fujimoto, Choreography Shigehiro Ide, Hair & Make-Up Eri Akamatsu, Projection Design Taiki Ueda
Stage Manager Masataka Sesaki, Production Manager Ayumu Poe Saegusa, Producer Hiroyuki Suzuki, Surtitles Susan Hingley & Jo Allan
Co-Producer Ikumi Kuronaga, Assistant Producer – NODA MAP Yuki Katsu, PR – NODA MAP Iku Ito and Mobius PR Elaine Jones, Producer – Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Kayo Furuta, General Producer – Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Minako Naito.