This is a beautiful play, wonderfully presented.
Despite being only 45 mins in length, it’s fantastically rich.
Written in the early 1950’s by Yukio Mishima, and inspired by traditional Japanese Noh theatre, it’s a meditation on time, ageing and beauty.
A young poet meets a 99 year old woman in a park, late at night. The opening sequence, which juxtaposes the ancient woman collecting cigarette butts with young lovers seeking the ephemeral pleasures of sexuality, brilliantly introduces the play’s concerns.
Though sourced from the Japanese, the play reminds me of Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial, and all those artists of the European late medieval and renaissance eras who knew that Death underpins Life, that Change grants meaning to Constancy. Think those shadowy still life paintings juxtaposing flowers and skulls. It’s not morbidity, but honesty … and the Truth will set us free. It’s a privilege to see a piece like this in our anglophile Australian theatre, to be shown how another culture has discovered similar treasures.
Susan Ling Young is magnificent, in one instant an aged woman, in another the young woman of eighty years earlier.
Wern Mak is utterly compelling, delicately balancing the cynicism of the disappointed young man with the wonder of the poet learning to see unexpected beauty.
Director Jeremi Campese pitches the piece perfectly between humour and suspense, and aided by choreographer Artemis Alfonzetti, complements the simple lucid language with heartbreakingly graceful movement. The scene in which the entire cast dance – at a ball eighty years gone but eternally present – is theatrical gold.
Paul Gilchrist
Sotoba Komachi by Yukio Mishima
at Old Fitz, as a late night show, until 13 April
Image by Karl Elbourne
Theatre Red 
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