3 Titans of Theatre: Seamless, stunning and totally absorbing.

PUBLISHED September 6th, 2013 02:44 am | UPDATED July 25th, 2024 03:20 pm

Complicite’s production Shun-Kin opened on the 30th August, as part of the 3 Titans Of Theatre mega-project co-presented by The Esplanade and The Singapore Repertory Theatre, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Shun-kin is based on two texts by a legend in modern Japanese literature: the 20th-century writer Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s ‘A Portrait Of Shun-kin’ and ‘In Praise Of Shadows’, both written in 1933. This production from Complicite and the director Simon McBurney blends bunraku puppetry, traditional performance, music and beautiful imagery.

The play tells of a dark but perversely beautiful relationship between a blind shamisen player, Shun-Kin, and her dutiful servant, Sasuke. The production was co-produced by Complicite, Tokyo’s Setagaya Public Theatre and The Barbican London and stars Japanese actors Eri Fukatsu and Yoshi Oida, with music by master shamisen player Hidetaro Honjoh. Shun-kin also evolved out of McBurney’s quest to understand a culture so far removed from his own. His first trip to Japan was in 1995 and started an overwhelming need to discover more about Japanese culture. Incidentally, McBurney’s Japanese links are strong. He is married to half-Japanese pianist Cassie Yukawa and they have two young children aged four and a half and three. His group Complicite staged ‘The Elephant Vanishes’, an adaptation of three short stories from Haruki Murakami’s book of the same name.

Shun-Kin is a young woman from a prosperous merchant family in Osaka, born in 1829 and blinded in a mysterious incident (suggested to arise from the jealousy of a servant) when she was just 8. In these early scenes depicting Shun-kin’s youth, the character portrayed by a puppet, is manipulated with marvelous dexterity and delicacy by two performers in the bunraku style. Eri Fukatsu provides Shun-kin’s voice, a childish squeak that can be gentle at one moment, cruel the next. (Later Ms. Fukatsu enacts the role.)

Pampered by her family because of her misfortune, Shun-kin is also treated with unusual deference because she shows a great gift for playing the shamisen, the stringed instrument that provides the show’s musical accompaniment. (Honjoh Hidetaro composed the score, which he also plays live.) Shun-kin is accompanied to her lessons by Sasuke (Songha), a family servant, who soon becomes her devoted admirer and eventually her student. He takes to playing the shamisen in secret, copying Shun-Kin and is eventually discovered by the family. Shun-Kin becomes his shamisen instructor.

The relationship between stern ‘master,’ as Sasuke refers to Shun-kin, and devoted student, is eerie but fascinating. Though strictly formal in public, there is sexual intimacy in private. And Shun-Kin’s cruel treatment of Sasuke is also reflected in their erotic liaisons. The portrayal of Shun-Kin as a bunraku puppet represents the social distance between the girl from a rich family and a servant. Yet, she becomes Sasuke’s object of worship and desire.

The perversity of their relationship, which fuels their attraction, only grows more intricate and intense as the characters grow up. (Their sexual intimacy begins when she is in her early teens and he a few years older.) There is an unsettling and almost magical moment when the actress Junko Uchida subtly moves into the role of Shun-kin midway through the story, but continues to be manipulated by the puppeteers. The actress moves in the same manner as the puppet and though humanlike, the mask with its mane of black hair and her startling white pallor makes her seem inhuman.

The action on stage is divided into three time zones: the story of Shun-Kin and Sakuse set in the nineteenth century runs in parallel with contemporary scenes, in which the amusing Ms. Tateishi, as the radio narrator, chats with an unseen producer or phones her lover, and also scenes set in 1933, where Tanizaki himself (Kentaro Mizuki) scribbles busily at a low table, occasionally telling the audience of his own unrequited passions.

The staging is minimalist, in true Japanese style, but so effective. Most of the action takes place in shadows. The many cast members construct the blind woman’s world from sliding tatami mats and moving poles. The stagecraft and imagery used is breathtaking, almost magical: fluttering sheets of paper become flocks of larks, red streamers curving through the air convey spurts of blood. Shun-Kin gives birth and the baby’s birth is suggested through sound effects, gesture and the unfolding of a kimono. We never see the baby itself since Shun-kin, refusing to admit that Sasuke is the father, coolly insists that her parents give the child away. There are also scenes set at the cemetery where Shun-kin and Sasuke are buried. The actors, holding aloft thin wooden poles, mimic the movement of tree branches swaying in the wind, mournfully over their graves. The stones marking these graves are, we are duly informed, of different sizes and not laid side by side. Even in death, Shun-Kin and Sasuke keep their distance based on status. The video projection, sound recordings and contrasts between light and dark provide a continuum of evolving images.

There was also a magical element in how the bunraku puppet is used to bring Shun-Kin to life. As a girl, we see her as a head and arms above a kimono; as she grows into a woman, the puppet gains legs. In a haunting scene, Shun-kin wraps her wooden legs around the human Sasuke as they make love. In the final scenes, Shun-kin is replaced by actress Eri Fukatsu. The transition from one to the other is seamless.

At the climax of the play, Sasuke commits the supreme act of self-sacrifice and devotion by blinding himself, so that he can assure Shun-Kin that he is not able to see her ruined face. I confess that I could not watch this. At the end of the play, the repeated actions of his students, helping him drink his cup of tea, settling a blanket over his sleeping body, until death claims him were very moving.

As much as I enjoyed the production, my only complaint was the constant challenge to keep reading the English surtitles that appeared on screens on either side of the stage while trying not to miss any of the action unfolding on stage! (To be fair, the SRT did advise patrons to purchase tickets from Row H onwards. I was seated in Row L.) The auditorium of the Esplanade Theatre on Friday night was full but the audience was totally absorbed in the action on stage. And although the play was just short of two hours with no interval, time seemed to fly.

In the program notes, McBurney writes, “In Japan, sometimes it’s hard to know what you are looking at.” I have to agree. Emerging from the theatre, it was not easy to articulate what I had just seen but the images are branded in my memory. My overall impression? Seamless, stunning and totally absorbing.

I hope that SRT will continue its collaboration with Complicite so we can experience more of their incredible productions in future.

If you missed Shun-Kin, do not despair, you can catch productions by the other two Titans, Yukio Ninagawa (Musashi) and Peter Brook (The Suit) in November. Tickets are selling out fast, so hurry! Purchase your tickets here