The all-female Project Nyx company brings Shuji Terayama’s classic to the States.
Shuji Terayama’s 1979 play Duke Bluebeard’s Castle uses the French folktale of the murderous Bluebeard—in particular, composer Béla Bartók and librettist Béla Balász’s 1918 opera adaptation—as a framework for a riotous interrogation of theater itself. If you need your theater to have characters and narratives you can emotionally invest in, the play will drive you nuts.
But throwing Molotov cocktails into conventional notions of drama was the whole mission behind the angura movement in Japan throughout the 1960s and ’70s, and Terayama was one of its most famous members. When staged as exuberantly as director Kim Sujin and his all-female Project Nyx company does in the new production making its North American premiere as part of this year’s Under the Radar festival, Terayama’s stylistic subversions are irresistible.
Card tricks set the anarchic tone for the evening at the start, for which a magician (Syun Shibuya) and his assistant (Kaho Asai) rope in a few audience members in the front row. The magician pops up intermittently throughout the two-hour performance with even more dazzling sleights of hand, many of them involving seemingly out-of-nowhere costume changes. An aerialist performs routines on a hoop hung from the ceiling. A vocal-and-instrumental duo (Kokusyoku Sumire, featuring Yuka on vocals and accordion, and Sachi on violin) performs songs throughout the show.
Doors reveal mirrors behind them in dance routines choreographed by Taeko Okawa (set design by Satoshi Otsuka). A character from a wholly different fairytale appears: a puppeteer named Coppélius (Ruri Nanzoin), who famously created a life-size doll in the E.T.A. Hoffman-inspired ballet Coppélia. There’s even complex wordplay: for instance, two characters named Aris (Yume Tsukioka) and Teles (Hinako Tezuka), who, bound together with the Japanese word for “and,” becomes “Aris to Teles,” as in “Aristotle(s).”
Somewhere underneath all the whimsy—which is given a candy-colored veneer in Asuka Sasaki’s costume design—lies the original story of Bluebeard, the rich man who has killed his past six wives, and the seventh wife who goes through multiple doors to discover his murderous past. Terayama adds a meta-theatrical layer, making this as much a backstage drama as it is a retelling of the folktale.
Thus, this seventh wife (Rei Fujita) doubles as a young actor playing that role, interacting with both a weary Stage Manager (Misa Homma) and an imperious older performer (Nozomi Yamada). A costume designer (You Yamagami), though, warns her not to take on the role, claiming the production is a front for actual murders, including that of the actor’s own brother. Gradually, Terayama’s distinct, allegorical vision snaps into focus: The “Bluebeard” here turns out to be the play itself, one that so consumes the actor that she is ultimately no longer able to distinguish between play and reality.
All of this might seem like too much for one show. The alchemy between the cast and director, however, often had me surrendering to the surrealistic onslaught, eager to see what crazy stage vision would come next. In a program note, Kim expresses his hope that this production will offer him to the opportunity to present more angura theater in NYC, especially in outdoor venues. Based on Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, the chance to explore this kind of experimental theater is mouthwatering indeed.