A little light relief
WITH its production of The Braggart Samurai, the Mansaku Company from Japan adds to an already impressive international theatre line-up in this year's Arts Festival. Kyogen, a form of classical Japanese drama, is usually performed between Noh plays. Whereas the latter are serious, stately and very long, kyogen plays are comical and short; in other words, they are interludes of light relief amidst the solemnity of a Noh programme.
Prior to the main event, a 20-minute traditional kyogen play, The Owl, got the evening off to a fine start. The comic nature of kyogen is expressed in situations rather than through character - an aspect of popular entertainment that is universal and timeless. In The Owl, a man's brother is possessed by spirits and demons, which is to say that he has a headache, and the services of a warrior-priest are needed. The treatment, rubbing prayer beads noisily together and chanting, produces rather odd results:the patient flags his arms, twitches once or twice and hoots like an owl. Despite the priest's attempts to invoke the spirit of a crow, the suffering man remains an owl. Indeed, so powerful are the demons and spirits that the healthy brother also becomes affected. Finally, a more potent prayer effectively cures the brothers, leaving the priest himself helplessly possessed.
The Samurai Braggart, written by Yasunari Takahashi, is a kyogen adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor, arguably Shakespeare's least successful work. Perhaps because it contains only the essentials of the original, the Japanese version is much more fun to watch. Variations of lines from other Shakespearean plays also crop up now and again.
The Falstaffian figure of the samurai Suke-eman Horata is played in a wonderfully bold manner by Mansaku Nomura. The samurai lives only for pleasure, which for him consists in quaffing sake and in lechery. He expresses contempt for honour in a speech borrowed from Henry IV, Part I, and the play takes on an absurd quality when he parodies Jacques in As You Like It: ''All the world's a joke, and men and women are merely jesters.'' Just like Falstaff, our samurai had to hide in a laundry basket to escape from an irate husband. That the basket was invisible was a master stroke on the part of Mansaku Nomura, who also directed.
The style of both plays was broad and devastatingly simple. Cod laughter and exaggerated gestures, for instance, work well when they are done with total commitment. And that was evident in the performances of each of the actors in this scintillating, all-male company.
There seem to be too many events in the Arts Festival these days, which means that productions like this one can play for only two performances. A great pity.
The Braggart Samurai, Mansaku Company, Lyric Theatre, Academy for Performing Arts. March 4-5
