Amorbid if unacknowledged curiosity in watching a play by Yukio Ninagawa is wondering if his cast will all make it through the performance: the youngest actor is a pensioner, the oldest is 88. A trained nurse waits in the wings - just in case. But then Ninagawa, who brings his acclaimed Saitama Gold Theatre to Hong Kong for the first time next month, has made a late career out of not acting his age. One of Japan's most celebrated directors, Ninagawa - who turned 79 on October 15 - loves upsetting our expectations of how the elderly should behave. Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets - showing at the New Vision Arts Festival - depicts a 22-strong gang of stooped, raggedy women breaking into a courtroom and turning a trial on its head: guards are blown up; judges are stripped of their trousers and held hostage; defendants become plaintiffs. Hurling X-rated invective at the court, the women eventually hand down death sentences on the prosecutors, hated symbols of the establishment. These are characters defiantly refusing to go gently into the good night. Ninagawa doesn't shy from describing the difficulties of working with his cast. "It's very hard," he says, chuckling at the memory. "They forget their lines, they can't move very fast. If they get one leg caught in their pants, you have to go and help them. And they're getting older so rehearsals take longer. "We've had cast members lose husbands and family members during production, and some had to enter hospitals themselves. Japan's entire ageing problem is contained in our company." Nearly a quarter of Japan's population is aged over 65 - a world record. That will rise to 40 per cent by 2060, according to a recent government report which also warns that the population could fall a third unless Japan makes more babies, or embraces mass immigration. The implications for state finances are stark, the government warns. From being a country that once venerated its old people, Japan now often seems to view them as a nuisance. Taro Aso, a former prime minister known for his verbal misfires, sparked controversy last year when he said pensioners should "hurry up and die" - a remark that showed scant respect for the millions of retirees who rebuilt the country after the second world war. Ninagawa wanted to rescue senior citizens from such insults when he formed the Saitama Gold Theatre - for amateur actors over 55 years old - in 2006. A devotee of revolutionary Polish experimentalist Tadeusz Kantor and left-wing British director Ken Loach, he believes dismissing the old, whether politically or artistically, is a mistake. "Age is proof that you have lived a long, rich life. I try to find a way to use this resource to find new ways of expression; to find a new form of theatre based on the experiences of the cast," he says. To this end, he held auditions for elderly amateurs "in good health", interviewing about 1,200 people from across Japan. His final team of 48 actors includes housewives, retired tour guides, widows and even a second world war kamikaze pilot. They gather five days a week for training in the theatre, in a suburb north of Tokyo. Much of the instruction is based on the work of radical playwright Kunio Shimizu, who helped lead Japan's underground theatre in the 1960s and '70s. Some of the actors find acting tough: grandmothers have been known to stumble over the expletives in the script; the former pilot once told Japanese media he was more afraid of going on stage than going to war. Ninagawa, who made his directorial debut in 1969 with a Shimizu play, is something of a national treasure, renowned for mixing productions of Shakespeare and Greek tragedies with adaptations of Japanese classics. Gold Theatre was a unique yet risky experiment for one of Japan's most garlanded directors - but it paid off. Critics and audiences alike have been astounded by the quality of the performances, banishing any mawkish sentimentality that they might have about the advanced age of the actors. Ravens is based on a play by Shimizu, but the new version swaps his young radicals for pensioners. "Those original rebels are now ageing," says Ninagawa. The play partly references the struggles of the 1960s and '70s against militarism, authority and the Vietnam war. But the choice of cast also reflects a far older tradition of feudal radicalism among Japanese women, says the director. "That goes back centuries. These women carry the memories of those struggles." In the play, several young radicals are on trial for lobbing a handmade bomb. The women come to rescue them but in the end turn on everyone, including the young defendants. Ninagawa is gently critical of Japan's youth for lacking the fire of his generation, which was raised during the war and its traumatic aftermath; he was 10 years old when the fighting stopped. He remembers then Emperor Hirohito's broadcast in August 1945, accepting defeat. "You couldn't hear a word he was saying because of the drone of cicadas," he says, smiling. The speech was the trigger for epochal changes. "We had a strict military education when I was a child," Ninagawa says. "Then it suddenly switched and became democratic. I remember all that. I think Japan today is again headed in a very dangerous direction." He cites Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "reinterpretation" of the country's pacifist constitution, written in 1946, and his decision to relax Japan's ban on selling and developing weapons. Abe was bitterly criticised for ignoring Japanese public opinion, which opposed both decisions. "I think older people are more aware of these dangers, the people who remember the war and the transition to democracy," Ninagawa says. "That makes them especially sensitive to attempts to squash democracy again." Perhaps Abe could come to the play, he adds. "He might learn something." They forget their lines, they can’t move very fast. If they get one leg caught in their pants, you have to go and help them YUKIO NINAGAWA, ABOUT HIS ELDERLY CAST Ninagawa says his cast is "incredibly excited" about going to Hong Kong, where they will stage three performances (followed by five shows in Paris). He sees parallels in his work with Hong Kong's pro-democracy demonstrations. "I don't know if it's okay to say this but I hope the protests will keep going," he says. Despite the difficulties of working with his actors, the director loves observing the impact on their lives. "They come back to life," he says. "Their memory revives; they get physically stronger. And their faces lighten. Old people's expressions become stiff and droopy. But if they act, over years the muscles and tendons in their faces come back to life and their expressions become animated again." As for the mortality rate, his team - average age 75 - has been running for nine years and has lost only one member to old age. One of his actors even got off a wheelchair and walked again, says Ninagawa. Not quite a miracle, perhaps, but testament to the miraculous power of nightly applause. thereview@scmp.com Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets , Kwai Tsing Theatre, Nov 14-15, 8pm; Nov 16, 3pm, HK$140-HK$440 Urbtix. Inquiries: 2370 1044