Yukio Ninagawa's Shintoku-Maru at the Kennedy Center

Although we won't be starting the drama unit for a little while yet, I thought I'd post an entry about a play that my husband and I saw this evening...the Japanese play Shintoku-Maru, directed by Yukio Ninagawa.  The play was written during the 1970s, so it is a good example of more modern theater, especially in its reliance on spectacle and refusal to confine itself to realism.  The performance was entirely in Japanese, but the visuals and the acting were amazing.  The actors received two standing ovations, and, well, you can see some of the visuals from the picture above.

Shintoku-Maru tells the story of a young man who is alternately attracted to and repulsed by his stepmother, a woman his father has bought to "complete" the family.  In the meantime, Shintoku, the young man, has been searching for his dead mother, even in the underworld.  Therefore, his father's attempt to "complete" the family ends in madness, violence, and its dissolution.  This story reminds many of Oedipus Rex or Hippolytus. 

The play opened with a market scene.  Actors stood on a balcony above the rest of the stage, and sparks rained down from the torches that they held.  Again, you may see this from the picture above.  Other actors in various masks and disguises, often pushing carts, paraded back and forth on the stage.  Then Shintoku appeared, dressed in white Western clothing and holding a picture of his late mother.  Interestingly, he was the only character to wear pants.  Everyone else in his family (including his father) wore a patterned kimono.  And isn't white the color of mourning in Japanese culture?

In the next scene, Shintoku's father is looking over a display of actresses from a disbanded theater company.  One, Nadeshiko, will become his wife.  As played by Kayoko Shiraishi, this woman is very chatty and tries to become a part of her new family but is rejected by both her stepson *and* her husband.  (Her rejection by her husband is sexual.)  At first, she appears to be wearing a mask.  Here is a picture of Shintoku and Nadeshiko together at the end of the play:

   The actor playing Shintoku (Tatsuya Fujiwara) has appeared in a number of the director's productions, including a very torrid-looking Romeo and Juliet.  Here are some pictures from a 2001 or 2002 production of Shintoku-Maru in Japan:

http://www.majorleague.co.jp/kouen/shintokumaru/gallery/index.html

Truveo, a video site,  also has a link to an interview with Fujiwara about the making of Shintoku-Maru:

http://www.truveo.com/Fujiwara-Tatsuya-Making-of-Shintokumaru/id/3129579189

The scenes on this video are adult but not gratuitous.


For more about the director Yukio Ninagawa, here is a link to a 2001 interview with him:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/saturday_review/story/0,,493351,00.html

Often he has directed Shakespeare's plays:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/06/10/bttitus10.xml

http://www.villagevoice.com/theater/0250,solomon,40440,11.html

http://www.yessirnigel.com/lear_pics.htm

I've been trying to find a link to articles about his production of Romeo and Juliet!

But I think that I will have to call it a night now.  Before I do, here is a link to an interview in which he swears off working with English-language actors:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ddd2052c-ecef-11db-9520-000b5df10621.html

His productions are not always critically well-received.  Critics Sheridan Morley and Michael Billington explain why:

http://www.iht.com/articles/1999/11/03/lon.t.php?page=1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3922982,00.html

I wonder how Ninagawa's Lear compared to Kurosawa's Ran.