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Tokyo Nostalgia

nytheatre.com review by Kimberly Wadsworth
August 15, 2005

In Tokyo Nostalgia, Theatre Arts Japan showcases the work of Kunio Kishida, a Tokyo playwright of the early 20th century. Kishida isn’t that widely known in the United States, but apparently his impact on Japanese theater was much like Arthur Miller’s in this country.The evening opens with Two Men Playing With Their Lives, featuring Motoki Kobayashi and Yosuke Takahashi as two unnamed men who meet at a train yard at night; each has decided to kill himself by jumping in front of a train, but neither counted on having any company. So instead, they get to talking—about each of their reasons for suicide, about whether they each should go through with their plans, and even about who gets to jump first. There are some moments of dark humor in the piece; a number of moments when one or the other decides to go ahead and make a jump for it and dashes offstage, but returns a moment later, making an excuse for not following through—Takahashi’s character returns to the stage after one attempt and complains the passing train got soot in his eye. “I can’t go like this,” he pleads to Kobayashi, “can you help me get it out first?” Both actors’ performances are quite affecting; unfortunately, during their more thoughtful monologues, I was having trouble hearing them speaking over the hum of the theater’s air conditioning.This isn’t a problem with the third piece, Railroad, which has no dialogue at all. Kobayashi and Takahashi are joined by actress Yuriko Hoshina, the third member of the ensemble, in a mime about three people at a station waiting for their respective trains. I wasn’t certain what the story was that was being told in this case, but as a slice-of-life mime, the ensemble was spot-on. Many in the audience chuckled with recognition at things they’d seen on subway platforms every morning in this city.Hoshina also serves as the evening’s host, introducing and setting up each of the evening’s plays. But she absolutely steals the show in the evening’s second play, Paper Balloon. The plot is simple—a young couple having a spat about how “we never go out any more.” But through sheer charm, the wife soon draws her indulgent husband, played by Kobayashi, into a game of make-believe about an outing they could take, a fantasy day trip to a seaside resort. They both get so caught up in the fun of acting out all the phases of their trip—the train to the resort, lunch at the hotel, a stroll on the beach—that they forget their quarrel, until the game ends—and with it, the play—with a sudden tender moment between them.Hoshina is simply delightful as the young wife, giving her such a sweet, playful manner that you can’t imagine how anyone could resist playing along with her. Soon after Hoshina kicked off their fantasy trip, I was wearing a huge grin, one which kept growing the further they got into their voyage. Similar grins broke out on the faces of others in the audience as Hoshina won more and more of us over.Director Eriko Ogawa uses simple, straightforward direction befitting Kishida’s realist playwriting style. Her wisest direction, though, may simply have been to let Hoshina win over the audience during Paper Balloon—it’s a performance I’m still grinning about a full day afterward.