Adapting the works of early 20th-century Japanese writer and farmer Kenji Miyazawa into an amusing, escapist adventure, 1st Stage’s Postcards from Ihatov feels assured in its design and craftsmanship.
Created and directed by multi-faceted visual theater artist Natsu Onoda Power, the world-premiere production skillfully blends music, poetry, puppetry, calligraphy, cutout animation, and, of course, drama to explore Iwatov, the imaginary universe where most of Miyazawa’s stories take place.
The writer, known for his classic fantasy novel Night on the Galactic Railroad, named this fictional plane, filled with philosophical kids and talking animals who express deep inner lives, after his beloved hometown of Iwate.
And, according to the be-whiskered professor (Matthew Vaky), who teaches lessons on Miyazawa to the play’s protagonist, an Unknown Author (Matthew Marcus), Miyazawa is still recognized as a favorite son of Iwate.
The author’s affinity for home is reflected in his fiction, in the persistent images of the alder trees and fields of pampas grasses that characterize the Iwate landscape. Power reflects that landscape in her textured scenic design, which also features a front scrim curtain upon which pages of Miyazawa’s writing are projected. The production boasts layer after layer of such texture and detail.
Projected onto a different screen, mounted upstage, scenes of cutout animation depict a Miyazawa children’s story. Three performers — 1st Stage regulars Ethan J. Miller, Jacob Yeh, and Pauline Lamb — create the live animation through puppetry, moving paper cutouts across vivid backgrounds. They also adroitly mimic camerawork by raising and lowering the cutouts under the camera.
Confined to a modest room at the side of the stage, the trio look like tinkerers in the author’s brain, spontaneously conjuring a story, to the steady beat of offstage drums. They introduce tales, and also, on occasion, leave their little room to take on a role in the drama, joining Marcus, Vaky, and sixth ensemble member Deidra Lawan Starnes.
Miller wields a fun physicality playing a cuckoo bird who wants to improve his singing, and Yeh especially delights in scenes from a fable about a scorpion and weasel, capturing the just-right mock-serious tone when the scorpion has to plead his case. Vaky’s professor — an expert on Miyazawa and “meows-icology,” who resembles and behaves like a cat, and might be a cat, but insists he is not a cat — is always a laugh.
The stories themselves are charming, too, populated by Ihatov eccentrics like a drumming tanuki (or Japanese raccoon) carrying a bottle of sake, and the deer who contemplates a hand towel dropped by a farmer in the grass. On the Galactic Railroad, we meet a birdcatcher who offers pressed swan and goose to eat.
In Postcards from Ihatov, audiences (especially young ones) might discover a remarkable fantasy world they’ll want to eagerly dive into once they leave the theater. The show, fundamentally, will lead some interested readers to Miyazawa and his stories, dominated by fanciful characters contemplating loss and existence.
But, what, other than the reference, and the momentary delight of living in his tales, does Power want to convey through compiling these pieces of stories? As a whole, the play entertains but doesn’t convey an express purpose behind the odyssey to Miyazawa’s creative consciousness.
Postcards from Ihatov (★★★☆☆) runs through June 23 at 1st Stage, 1524 Spring Hill Road, in Tysons, Va. Tickets are $25 to $55. Call 703-854-1856, or visit www.1stStage.org.
Every single day, for 20 years straight, bookstore assistant Kenneth has headed after work to Wally's Tiki Bar to get blitzed on Mai Tais with his best friend Bert. Wally's, as Kenneth informs the audience at the top of Eboni Booth's 2024 Pulitzer-winning drama Primary Trust, is his favorite place in Cranberry, New York, the sleepy Rochester suburb he's called home all 38 years of his life.
Standing center stage, Kenneth (Julius Thomas III) proudly points out Wally's among the buildings and homes of Cranberry, modeled in relief around the walls of Signature's ARK Theatre. He speaks of the place with childlike joy, admitting he might be prone to angry outbursts on occasion, but all's well as long as he's got Wally's and Mai Tais after work with Bert.
Take it from somebody who's sat in a stylist's chair at an African hair braiding shop in Harlem, and had the kind woman scoff at the thought of trying to finesse too little hair into D'Angelo-inspired cornrows, that watching Whitney White's snappy staging of JaJa's African Hair Braiding is like stepping into a salon on 125th Street in Manhattan.
Jocelyn Bioh's hilarious ensemble comedy -- which premiered on Broadway last fall in a production that White has brought intact to Arena Stage, except for the cast -- offers a generous glimpse into the world of the immigrant women whose lives intersect at JaJa's shop in Harlem. Each character we meet is vibrantly specific, yet seems to authentically reflect the communities they represent.
Anyone who knows the public story of Roy Cohn and his protégé Donald Trump is likely to enter director Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice anticipating one particular turning point in the pair's complicated relationship.
Donald turning his back on Roy, when the notorious fixer was dying of an AIDS-related illness, wasn't like the offhanded betrayal of a business interest, wife, or moral principle. Although, Abbasi (Holy Spider) and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman (Independence Day: Resurgence) supply ample scenes of their Donald, embodied spectacularly by Sebastian Stan, betraying trusts.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.