Photo: Yasuo Yamahiro

Tetsuhiko Maeda, an artist who represented Japan and was highly admired around the world as a scenery artist, passed away on January 20, 1998. This New Year's Day, in Tokyo, a tribute to Maeda's works was held. Maeda was always full of ideas for each production. In his early works, for example, he glued objects onto leotards. Maeda didn't differentiate between the elements of theater design, such as props and costumes; instead he "unified theater arts, the human body, and movement."He named this concept "Kinetic Art."

In Kei Takei's The Last Rice Field (1989), the dancers bend over and stretch out, still in a sitting position, in a set of yellow and green vertical stripes. Takei and Laz Brezer, who both have great stage presence, build up their own flow of air. The scenery and the movements of the dancers shape one consistent work of art, but that isn't all. Those vertical stripes shrink little by little, a social statement by the artists protesting the Japanese ministry of agriculture's policy of reducing farm acreage at that time.

The collaboration between Maeda and Katsuko Orita produced many fantastic works, including the highly accomplished Endless Summer (1986). Around a round steel object at center stage, dancers in summer folk costumes move. Ms. Orita's playful ideas harmonize perfectly with Maeda's visual design. His aspect of the production is equally skillful, in which a shining white stage creates a three-dimensional space.

In Pas de Quatre (1977), choreographer Tatsue Sata's power of description found a perfect fit in Maeda's visual world. A rich married couple, a steward, and a maid stumble into a world of greed. The dancers' emotional expression is natural; their ballet technique doesnÐt feel apart from our daily lives. Maeda's art in this piece is simple, but highlights the physical beauty of the performers.

Evocations (1985), by Ms. Takei, is about the four seasons, and it is a very characteristic work of Kinetic Art's concept of visualizing the progress of time and the transition of a viewpoint. As dancers perform the "Spring" section, Takei's movements are gradually transmitted to other dancers on a stage entirely filled with an enormous sheet, where the lines of the sheet taped on the floor indicate a thaw. Soon fireflies appear, and a starry summer sky comes out after a blackout; it's summer. Then ropes fall from the ceiling, and the stage suddenly becomes an autumn grove where dancers appear among the trees. Then it's winter once again; the piece climaxes with white sand flowing down from the sky like a waterfall. That last scene is as imaginary as the drawing A Waterfall by Hiroshi Senju or as a waterfall in traditional Japanese painting. Many scenery design methods that are in style in today's Japanese modern dance can be seen in this early work.

Maeda created that effect of white sand pouring down from above onto the stage; today it's a technique often seen in Japanese theater. What separates Maeda's work from that of other stage designers is the high artistic quality of every one of his stage sets. Moreover, each element of his work merges with the bodies of the performers to create a world that is hard to establish, even in today's society, filled with technology and information.

Maeda's ideas still inspire set and lighting designers in Japan today. His experiments and ideas should be brought to and understood by a new generation, not only in Japan, but around the globe.

Artistic excellence? *****
Entertainment? ****
Inventiveness? ****
Healing power? ****

(Updated on 4/13/04)

The performers of Fugate/Bahiri Ballet NY are quite competent, and some excellent, but this young company is most interesting for its selection of choreographers. At Symphony Space this January, they chose for the first half of the program classical-style studies in form choreographed by the venerable: Balanchine, Tudor, and Martins. The dancers performed creditably in the Balanchine Valse-Fantaisie and the Tudor Continuo, both of which are small group works with some soloing. I found the group members more interesting than the soloists, as the former were allowed that bit of personal interpretation and variation that keeps one's interest and prevents the dancers from looking mechanized, while at the same time distracting from the formulaic choreography. The latter, however, were not quite strong enough to come across the fourth wall and enchant the audience. The Martins piece, Reflections, danced with coolness by Christina Fagundes and Davis Robertson, is quite sensuous in its conception, with the partners forming one whole organism with their separate bodies. The piece and the performers would, however, have benefited from a sense of playfulness.

The second half of the program consisted of two pieces that were more modern in their conceptualization. Thaddeus Davis's duet, Vivaldian Chat, is structurally more interesting than either the Balanchine or the Tudor, with three clearly demarcated sections. The music is the wonderful and strange cello and vocal arrangement of Bach and Vivaldi by Yo Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin. Unfortunately Mr. Davis seemed so taken with the technical abilities of his dancers, Tanya Wideman Davis and Prince Credell, that their virtuosity became an end in itself, especially in the first and third sections. The full-out technical bravura left too little room for the dancers to develop the emotions they were trying to find and that one would have expected from the program notes.

Tanya Wideman Davis and
Erik Wagner
Photo: Eduardo Patino

The final piece, A Glimpse, by Ann Marie DeAngelo, was the most ambitious of the evening. The ballet is set in the mind of the poet Théophile Gautier, whose novel is the basis for the ballet's libretto. It involves eroticism, both homoerotic and heteroerotic, with the characters of the poet and his mistress confounding the source of their attraction with what he—or she—is not. The dancing was difficult and athletic, as Ms. DeAngelo's work usually is, but in the end the images did not remain seared into the mind. Either the dancers have not found the necessary passion into which to throw themselves headlong, or the choreography itself lacks that passion.

This is an interesting young company with many strengths, technical and intellectual. Their choice of material is interesting historically, thematically, and even choreographically. Their next task is to cross the line from excellent to passionate. They need to dive into themselves and find the next level that will make them brilliant.

Artistic excellence? ***
Entertainment? ***
Inventiveness? **
Healing power? **

(Updated on 4/9/04)

Freddie Mercury, like so many celebrities, was self-invented. Born in Zanzibar of Iranian parents, educated first in India, then England, shy because of his buck teeth and homosexuality, Farookh Bulsara created the persona of a rock star out of an amalgam of insecurities and talents and took it, and himself, to the heights of success. He kept his private life private but he was the first rock star to admit publicly that he had AIDS. This one-man show purports to be FreddieÁs search for redemption before an unresponsive God. In fact, it is a recounting of his life with mentions, but no investigation, of the demons that drove him. And it is never clear why Freddie thinks he needs redemption at all—unless it is his presence in Purgatory and his desire to get out, one way or another.

Photo: Paul Urban

Purgatory doesn't seem so bad, though. It has champagne, and a throne, and a big crown, and costume changes, and even an enormous pile of cocaine. Sartre told us Hell is other people. Author and director Charles Messina thinks Purgatory, or perhaps Hell, is solitude. Perhaps FreddieÁs loneliness is what prods him to talk to God, or is it to us?

And here is the technical problem of the play. Whom is Freddie talking to? If to God, then why is he retelling his life's story? Surely God knows all that. Why bother to change clothes? God knows what you look like naked. In fact, at the top of the show, Freddie bathes away his KaposiÁs sarcoma, one of AIDS' opportunistic infections. If he is talking to the audience, then who is the audience? Not God, as we see from the shifts of focus. Then who? Neither Mr. Messina nor Amir Darvish, who plays Freddie, has solved this problem, and it leaves the performance, and the play, unsettled and unsettling. Lacking an interlocutor and having to deal with a play that is mostly exposition, much of Mr. Darvish's performance is reduced to posturing and lacks resonance. Rock stars, after all, are sex symbols. We want to feel some of that sexual power. Only toward the end, when Freddie talks of his lover of many years, does the actor find a sustained emotional truth.

If the purpose of Mercury really is to bring Freddie to terms with himself, then the actor and director must somehow use all that exposition and, in spite of it, find the route to epiphany. There is the kernel of a good idea here, but the hard nut remains to be cracked.

Artistic excellence? **
Entertainment? **
Inventiveness? *
Healing power? *

(Updated on 4/14/04)

(l-r) Yuki, Mansai and Mansaku Nomura
in Utsubozaru
Photo: Takako Nakasu

Kyogen theater is a part of Japanese oldest traditional performing art, Noh theater. Kyogen works are usually comedies and are played in between serious Noh pieces. In December, Mansaku-no-Kai Kyogen Company, led by Mansaku Nomura of the Nomura Family company (a branch of the Izumi School, one of the two Kyogen schools in Japan), visited New York City. In its second appearance at Japan Society, Mansaku-no-Kai introduced three generations of its leading actors: Mansaku, his son Mansai, and Mansai's son Yuki, who is only four years old. The three repertory pieces played in this performance were all directed such that they still seemed relevant today.

Kawakami is the story of a blind man (Mansaku) and his wife (Yukio Ishida). Impatient with the inconvenience of blindness, the man prays to a Jizo statue, a guardian deity, to restore his sight. Miraculously getting his vision back, he finds that his wife, whom he sees for the first time, is ugly. He tries to divorce her, telling her that the god advised him that their marriage was wrong. The faithful wife, who dedicated herself to him for so long, gets angry and prays for the gods to make her husband blind again. The man loses his sight again, and the piece ends with him being led away by his wife. Mansaku's performance is very realistic when he walks weakly as a blind man, cries out in pain falling down, or sobs for the sadness of losing his sight again. The work reminds us (especially women!) how men are egotistical creatures now and then.

Busu means poison here (although in Japanese it usually means ugly women). One day a master tells his two servants not to touch "Busu" while he is away. It's human nature to get curious about something you're prohibited to touch. The servants timidly open the cover of Busu, and find out it is liquid candy, which they eventually eat up. As an excuse, they break the house's treasures, and when the master returns they tell him that they ate Busu in order to die because of accidentally breaking the treasures. Yukio Ishida and Hiroharu Fukada performed the roles of the servants, and Haruo Tsukizaki played the master. The children in the audience were extremely amused, especially by the skilled miming of Ishida and Fukada.

Utsubozaru or The Monkey Skin Quiver is about a lord who loves hunting. The lord meets a monkey trainer with his monkey while hunting one day. The lord sees the monkey's beautiful coat and arrogantly demands that the trainer give him the monkey's skin to make a quiver. The trainer decides to kill his loving monkey, but he finds he's unable to do so, and so he asks the lord to kill him along with the monkey. Hearing this, the lord begins to cry and withdraws his demand. The happy trainer has the monkey dance for the lord to thank him, and the lord cheerfully dances with the monkey. Mansaku and Mansai traded the roles of the lord and the trainer in two performances, and Yuki played the monkey. While Mansaku's performance is more natural and dignified, Mansai's presence is flowery, brilliant, and gaudy. Mansai's beautiful voice singing the trainer's song was especially amusing to hear. However, the most impressive actor was little Yuki. He watched the reaction of the audience while performing, and repeated movements at which people laughed; even if he made a mistake in a dance sequence, he kept going so the audience never noticed the mistake –– he is quite a talent! It was even more amusing to see his daddy and grandpa looking nervous or being startled by Yuki's performance –– you hardly ever see them onstage like that.

For the American audience the lines were projected in English on a screen next to the stage. The company modified the classical Japanese of the original plays into modern Japanese, and made movements and expressions much more realistic than is traditional; both of these changes made it very easy for us to understand the plays. Especially interesting is that this company in some ways arranges its Kyogen works like Western musicals. For instance, spoken lines melt into singing, or a duet is arranged between a wife and husband. It is different, yet it is very natural as Kyogen. With such new directions and experiments, Mansaku-no-Kai will definitely charm an international audience. Although their last New York performance, a forced Kyogen version of Shakespeare in 1997, was disappointing, this time their performance was excellent. Plus, with little Yuki, who on opening night caused a burst of laughter when he forgot to bow in the curtain call and was reminded by a tap on the head from his father, I felt even more expectations and dreams for the future of this Japanese traditional art.

Artistic excellence? *****
Was it entertaining? *****
Was it inventive? ****
Was it healing? *****

In 1939 the Nazis were sweeping through Europe. To the west, in England, Charlie Chaplin would release The Great Dictator the following year. In Hollywood, Ernst Lubitsch, a German living in America for 17 years and an American citizen for six, produced and directed To Be Or Not To Be, starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. Chaplin's film, like the man, was highly political. The Great Dictator aimed at deflating Hitler and Mussolini and mitigating the terror they were causing throughout Europe. Lubitsch used the invasion of Poland and the terror of the Nazis as the background for a spy thriller with elements of both farce and emotional truth.

Jack Benny and Carole Lombard play Josef and Maria Turo, the premier acting couple of Warsaw. Maria, especially, is a famous star and the topic of much speculation and gossip. When, during a run of Hamlet, a young aviator (a toothy Robert Stack) declares his love, she decides to allow herself the titillation of an almost-affair, and tells him to come visit her backstage when Josef begins his soliloquy “To be, or not to be.” Of course, the young man must push through the entire row of patrons, causing hubbub for them and great anguish for poor Josef, especially as the young man repeats his escapade night after night. And then the Nazis invade Warsaw. The young aviator flees to England to become part of the Polish wing of the Royal Air Force. When a certain Professor Sinitski lets slip to the fliers that he is going back to Warsaw, and then agrees to take messages to their loved ones, the young men are ecstatic. However, when the professor does not recognize Maria's famous name, our young aviator becomes suspicious and goes to British intelligence. When it is discovered that Sinitski is indeed a Nazi spy, the aviator is flown into Poland to contact the underground and save them from extinction. Shot down, he makes his way to the Turos' apartment, and in this way they and their theater company become involved in the liberation movement. In the course of their activity, Maria romances Sinitski; Josef impersonates an SS officer known as Concentration Camp Erhardt; Sinitski is murdered by the actors; Josef impersonates Sinitski in a meeting with the real Erhardt; the actors dress up as Nazis to rescue Josef from danger; and so on. Throughout, Josef is tortured by his jealousy of the young aviator and by his insecurity as an actor, and these two elements nearly do him in more than once. There is even an indirect acknowledgment of the Jewish issue. Jack Benny, of course, was Jewish, but the theater company is presented as Polish. There is, however, one supernumerary, named Ginsberg, who is clearly Jewish. He longs to play Shylock, and when he tries out the part ("If you prick us, do we not bleed...") on his friend, he is wonderful. We see the opening of this soliloquy several times, and it, and its repetition, provide perhaps the most overtly political statement in the film.

On an artistic level, the film is also quite enjoyable. Jack Benny basically plays himself, or the character he developed to represent himself over the years, but with great restraint and charm. Carole Lombard not only plays at the level of a comic actress, on Benny's level, showing us a woman as superficial as her egotistical husband, but she also manages moments when she convinces us that she is in danger and we truly worry for her. It is she who makes the success of the film as a thriller.

To Be Or Not To Be is also of technical interest. Parts of the film look quite old-fashioned. With our present familiarity with lifelike special effects and our demand for reality films, the painted backdrops leap out at the modern viewer from behind the few overturned carts or the police barriers strung together with barbed wire that provide the foreground. There are many mid-shots and not so many intense, psychological close-ups. Yet, as in so many early films shot in black-and-white, the lighting is stunning without becoming intrusive.

This film, though clearly under the control of Lubitsch, who was also the production designer, is also a collaboration between Lubitsch himself and the excellent actors and technical crew. This was meant to be a comedy, but the excellence of the collaboration has given us a film of a quality not often seen.

Artistic excellence? ****
Entertainment? ****
Inventiveness? ****
Healing power?***