In which my breath is completely taken away

Tonight I went to see a Japanese production of Medea. Unfortunately, there was no program that I could find (I’m guessing they weren’t anticipating the packed house and ran out), so I can’t give you names or even the production company. All I can tell you is that it was directed by Satoshi Miyagi. The other thing I can tell you is that, between last night and tonight, I’m totally in love with what the Japanese do with theatre.

The performance was held at the Kamani Auditorium. It’s now the third time I’ve been there (along with the Israli music thing and MacBeth) and I think it’s safe to say that it’s one of the ugliest theatres I’ve ever seen. The scuffed, shiny wood floor (amongst the yellow walls and brown curtains at the front) really takes away from whatever is onstage. Placed on top of this awful floor was a simple set, dominated by a fabric wall depicting traditional art, divided into panels that could be raised for entrances. This wall also acted as a scrim, occasionally illuminating the musicians concealed behind. The only other set element was a bookshelf, about 20 feet high, filled with oversized volumes of classic literature. Thankfully, there were projections along the back wall which provided some light dramaturgy along with the text.

Regardless of the shitty performance space, the production was absolutely brilliant and transcendental. Once I stopped concentrating on the awful floor, I was fully engaged on the edge of my seat. I’m not going to compare it to the Uzbekistan Medea that I saw last night, since both groups told the story in wildly different ways.

There was a live preset consisting of women in kimonos with cloth bags over their faces, holding portraits of themselves. Hunched over by the bookshelf was a withered hag, the aged version of Medea. The show started when a chorus of men entered from the back of the house and loudly chattered their way onto the stage. They were a group of business men who go to a restaurant and coerce the maids to perform Medea for them. They pull the bags off of some of the women and assign them roles (the remaining ones are the musicians).

The men sat motionless along the fabric wall and voiced the characters, one character per gentleman, and the rest voiced the chorus. The women would enter in costumes and silently act out the story as it was spoken (in a recitative form), with much grace and physicality and next to no physical expression, just one decided face. Jason and Creon were presented (with excellent execution of decided bodies) as villains with no real concern for Medea. The elder hag-Medea primarily watched the action, occasionally reaching for her younger self, and filling the role of the nurse, poisoning the garments herself.

There was a subtext where one of the men gets quite drunk and goes after one of the maids. This resulted in a moment where he pulls the sash off her kimono and in the resulting tug of war is strangled to death (oddly similar to part of Jocasta). This image juxtaposed the servant telling Medea the details of the deaths of Creon and his daughter.

My words will never do justice to just how amazing this play was. I’m just going to tell you what happens in the final sequence and hope it gives you some sort of an idea.

The lengthy ending was unbelievable in how fucking awesome it was. When Medea goes to kill her son (played by the smallest woman), she chases him howling (the only time you hear a female performer make noise) with a knife, and then suddenly the action freezes for an impossibly long time. Slowly, she puts the handle of the knife between her teeth, and mother and son reach for each other. With great love and tenderness, she slowly fixes his tie and straightens his jacket. Then she pushes the knife through him. A flurry of music and action follow. Jason’s next section is spoken, but not seen. Then, all of a sudden, all of the panels on the fabric wall rise, revealing all of the women, now in sexy red dresses. The women who played characters remove the final pieces of those costumes. With great resolve, they kill the remaining men, who thrash about wildly onstage to the pounding music. Lights cut to almost black. The final image we are given is of the withered hag-Medea picking up Jason’s white jacket and tenderly placing it over the man who voiced Jason.

Brilliant.