The Dark Inn.
Written and directed by Kuro Tanino. Dramaturgy by Junichiro Tamaki, Yukiko Yamaguchi and Mario Yoshino. Performed by Mame Yamada. Sohichi Murakami, Ichigo Lida, Kayo Ishikawa, Atsuko Kubo, Bobumi Hidaka and Hayato Mori. Niwa Gekidan Penino Collective. OzAsia Festival. Her Majesty’s Theatre. October 3 and 4 2017.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
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| The Dark Inn directed by Kuro Tanino. Photo by Shinsuke Sugino |
Deep in the recesses of the human psyche dwells the misery of
human anguish. A Japanese hot spring inn, secluded far in the rocky countryside
becomes a metaphor for human failing and ignorance, the first of the twelve
Buddhist Nidanas. The Dark Inn
harbours the mystery of foreboding, revealing the disturbing nature of human
misfortune. Profound in its seeming ordinariness, playwright and director Kuro
Tanino’s vision of social and psychological disintegration presents a grim
image of unfortunate characters, trapped within their own destiny. The Dark Inn is a riveting, absorbing
and mesmerizing drama that lingers long after the performance ends. Images of
six characters in search of meaning, and strangely brought together in the
remote inn, are indelibly printed on the memory as the drama unfolds to reveal
the flotsam and jetsum of society.
A dwarf arrives with his son with an unsigned invitation to
present their puppet show. They encounter an old woman, whose dreams remain
forever unfulfilled, a blind man, desperately hoping that the healing powers of
the spring will restore his sight, two unlikely geishas and a zumo built mute,
condemned to a life of servitude. The gloom of hopelessness descends upon their
unfortunate lives, bound together in the inn by a common affliction of
misfortune. They live out their predestined existence with no hope of release.
It is a destiny to be shattered when the proposed bullet train route will pass
by the inn on its route to a new future that will cast aside those left behind
in the inn’s location in what is known as Hell Valley.
Performed in Japanese with English surtitles on two side
screens, The Dark Inn is a morality
tale, played out on a remarkable set that revolves to reveal the reception area
to the inn, a bedroom for the male occupants below and an upstairs level for
the old woman and the two geishas and a third lower level that houses the hot
spring and change room, supervised by the mute. The realism of the design and the
meticulous and detailed construction of the timber framed inn present a
striking authenticity to the reality played out upon the stage. Tanino’s
direction is measured in its deliberate intensity, intriguing in its
progression from the introductory mystery to the uncomfortable meeting of the
characters to the comical interlude with the drunken geishas and the horrifying
performance of the grotesque puppet show.
There is no salvation for the characters doomed to live out
their futile existence. Ironically, the dwarf and his musician son leave to discover
success with their puppet performance. For the other characters, they remain
the victims of Fate’s fickle fortune, the Unfortunates, destined to live out
their lives as society’s outcasts. Tanino’s ensemble creates a reality as
unnerving as the dispirited lives they portray.
The performances are superb, laden with nuance, resonating with truth
and engrossing in their comment on human nature. Every moment is captured with
sublime expression of futility, longing and despair. The drunken abandonment of
the geishas contrasts with the agonized voyeurism of the silent servant or the
sickening vomiting of the blind Matsuo. There can be no joy in the
inevitability of their doomed existence.
In Adelaide for only two performances at the OzAsia Festival,
The Dark Inn is a rare theatrical
experience where the past and the future collide with irreconcilable
consequence and portentous foreboding.