SHUN-KIN. To 21 February.
London.
SHUN-KIN
based on the writings of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki.
Barbican Theatre To 21 February 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.45; Mat Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 1hr 50min No interval.
TICKETS 0845 120 7550 (booking fee).
www.barbican.org.uk/bite (reduced booking fee online).
Review: Carole Woddis 4 February.
More major-league internationalism from Complicite.
One should know never to take at face value the work of Complicite – or rather Simon McBurney, Complicite’’s restless artistic head. His latest collaboration with Tokyo’s Setagaya Public Theatre, after The Elephant Vanishes is nothing if not a tease and a mystery. McBurney has shown in his previous work Mnenomic he likes a good thriller. Why? and How? are his most ardent foot-soldiers. They push his narratives along, they give him his meat.
In Shun-kin, based on two works, A Portrait of Shunkin and In Praise of Shadows by leading 20th century Japanese writer, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki , the How? and Why? are omnipresent. Why was the beautiful, talented musician Shunkin blinded in youth and disfigured again by an intruder? Why did her faithful servant and lover Sasuke stay with her and eventually blind himself?
The whole story, narrated as a voice-over by a contemporary actress in a studio recording, who also happens to be conducting an affair with a younger man, adds a further layer - though whether her relationship ventures quite so graphically into the same sado-masochistic areas as those shown between Shunkin and Sasuke remains undeveloped.
An old-fashioned story-within-a-story then, but within that a powerful set of themes emerge - sexuality, power, beauty, love, disability, fantasy, ambiguity, to name but a few. Add in back-projection and a central character played by a Bunraku-operated puppet on a stage adorned by plain bamboo poles and a few mats and you have a production that grips incrementally through a shocking juxtaposition of violence with beauty, performed by a company who themselves epitomise the contradiction between the fluid and the controlled.
Not that Shun-kin is free from moments of irritation. In its violence and narcissism, Shunkin’s story carries an inbuilt repugnance. Yet such is its numinous, unnsettling quality (McBurney it seems has also learnt much from directors Robert Lepage and Yukio Ninagawa), I was movingly won over. Is it an ode to the past, an indictment of the crassness of our harsh modern world, with its so-called openness? “It is not clear,” begins the narrator. Nor is it. Take your pick.
Cast:
Kaho Aso, Songha Cho, Eri Fukatsu, Honjah Hidetaro, Kentaro Mizuki, Yasuyo Mochizuki, Nigoschichi Shimouma, Keitoku Takata, Ryoko Tateishi, Junko Uchida.
Director: Simon McBurney.
Designers: Merle Hensel and Rumi Matsui.
Lighting: Paul Anderson.
Sound: Gareth Fry.
Composer: Honjoh Hidetaro.
Projection: Finn Ross for mesmer.
Costume: Christina Cunningham.
Puppetry: Blind Summit Theatre.
Script Editor: Jo Allan.
Assistant director: Kirsty Housley.
Shun-kin was first performed at the Setagaya Public Theatre, Tokyo in February, 2008 where it returns in March 2009.
2009-02-09 00:39:58