The Long-Winded Bird
WTF?!
Yet another Arts Fest show. Yet another Friday. Yet another head scratcher.
That said, this time, I say this with the deepest respect and highest regard for the genius that is behind The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the book-to-stage adaptation of Japanese doyen Haruki Murakami's seminal book. Not that I've read it, mind. My tastes veer towards the more trashy.
Anyway, Stephen Earnhart and Greg Pierce must have surely outdone themselves and raised the bar for all future multi-medis and multi-elemental theatre with this evening's "living cinema" or "theatre of dreams", where so much was happening at any one time, you didn't know where to look or what to look at and what to expect next.
Right at the start, as the audience took to their seats, the performers were already on stage, figures in black floating across the set in random arbitrary stock movements like memories trapped in time. It was a stylised and surreal scene which played out to a haunting piano refrain on loop.
I'll come upfront and say outright that I "didn't get it". But in this instance, it is on a plane of profundity and complexity where the interactive art vs life meets reel vs real is the heart of the matter, dredging into an intense sub-consciousness.
It was a challenging production, scripted down to the smallest detail, the logistical nightmare is apparent for requiring the synchronisation and segueing of the seamless transitions between the mixed media and onstage performances.
With the selective use of screens and girders on which an AV montage in the back served to fulfill the visual element, this was a Quentin Tarantino film in playback. Quirky were Kill Bill-like manga images of silhouetted figures doing the deed and colour palate washouts of graphic scenes. All these contributed to a general sense of hallucinatory under-the-influence existence or doubt of.
As though there weren't enough to boggle the mind, Japanese bunraku puppets were employed to fill the characters scenes in less probable positions, down the bottom of a well for instance? This allegory of alienation then returns us to how catharsis or a semblance of normalcy in our lives is retained by the simple act of doing laundry, which was a recurrent thematic element.
This was great theatre. Visionary. Avant-garde. But perhaps running into two hours without an intermission and in Japanese for most parts (albeit very exquisitely written prose from the strength of the translation), it was more than bargained for.
What more can I say? I've really only been rambling without purpose.
Cheem, man!
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