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| Rimu-Tei Kidan (Mysterious story about a restaurant called Rimu-tei) Hachigatsu ni nemure (Sleep in August) |
| August 10, 11 & 12, 2000 at Keio Plaza Hotel |
| Cast: Koji Yakusho (Dramatic reading) Playwright & director: Ryo Iwamatsu Illusion Creator: Hiro Sakai |
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| gHachigatsu ni Nemureh (Sleep in August) is a dramatic reading performed by Koji Yakusho.
I went to see this performance twice. The staging of the performance at Keio Plaza Hotel Theater, Shinjuku, Tokyo was quite interesting. Not only the stage, but also the whole of the stalls were used in the performance. When the play starts, a man (Koji Yakusho) suddenly appears in the middle of the audience chairs. Walking along the aisle toward the stage, he starts talking: He has received a letter from a friend of his named Kashiwagi,whose wife has recently passed away. With the letter in hand, the man is now visiting Kashiwagifs lakeside restaurant named Rimu-tei at a lakeside. But there he has found no sign of him, even after searching for him in the vicinity for a couple of hours. The man then goes up to the stage and finds Kashiwagifs diary in one of the drawers of a table in a living room as he is requested to do in the letter. He starts reading Kashiwagifs diary. The diary is filled with sadness and his passionate love toward his beloved wife, Yoriko. While the man is reading the diary, strange things happen one after another in various parts of the theater: thus for instance, a table in the living room suddenly starts moving; and some chairs set a side of the audience in the garden start falling over. And the dry water fountain in the stalls suddenly sprays water; the picture on the wall suddenly changes. And the man suddenly disappears from an armchair in a small upper room on the stage and turns up in the stalls. These tricks are actually done by world-famous illusionist, Hiro Sakai. Koji Yakusho's reading was excellent. His voice sounded deep and resonant, conveying Kashiwagi's complex feelings toward Yoriko. While Yakusho is reading the diary, the audience comes to notice that the reader now may be Kashiwagi himself. What the audience can understand is a very sad love story about Kashiwagi, Yoriko and a young man whom Yoriko loved while she was young and who now sleeps at the bottom of the lake beside which the Rimu-tei stands. It was Yoriko herself who suggested to open a restaurant beside this lake a couple years before. It is reported that while Yoriko was trying to pick up a flower in a flower bed on the slope to the lake, she slips down into the lake and gets drowned. Kashiwagi makes a confession in the diary: after knowing the fact that Yoriko is still in love with the young man sleeping at the lake bottom, yet as her husband who passionately loves his wife, hoping whatever he does to please her, what can he do for her sake c |
| Before the performance, the audience enjoyed a mysterious and delicious dinner at a restaurant of the Keio Plaza Hotel: The menu said that the dinner would begin with disseart and coffee, ending up with a starter! Indeed, a piece of a cake and coffee were served in the beginning, but that was only appearance. Coffee tasted like soup and the cake tasted like pate. In fact, all the dishes were served in a right order. |
| Created on September 22, 2008 |
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