Reviewed by Judy Richter
"After the Quake," celebrated director Frank
Galati's stage adaptation
of two stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, is an apt choice for audiences
in quake-prone California. Hence, it's being co-presented by Berkeley
Repertory Theatre and
La Jolla Playhouse,
starting in Berkeley. By coincidence, it opened on Oct. 17, the 18th
anniversary of the devastating Loma Prieta quake in the San Francisco Bay Area.
(The reviewed performance was Oct. 20.)
Using
just five actors and two musicians, Galati interweaves "Honey Pie" and "Superfrog
Saves Tokyo."
Murakami wrote them in reaction to the Kobe, Japan, quake in 1995, followed
just two months later by a cult's sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway
system.The play opens with Junpei (Hanson Tse), a writer, telling a bedtime
story to young Sala (first grader Gemma Megumi Fa-Kaji, who alternates with Madison
Logan V. Phan).
Sala can't sleep because she has nightmares about the Earthquake Man shutting
her in a box. Junpei and Sala's mother, Sayoko (Jennifer Shin), have been friends since their
freshman year in college. In fact, the shy Junpei has been in love with Sayoko
all that time, but he never told her, so she married the third member of their
group, Katagiri (Paul H. Juhn). Sayoko and Katagiri have since divorced, but all three
have remained friends. Standing by as narrator is Keong Sim.
Merely
by donning green latex gloves and bug-eyed glasses (costumes by Mara
Blumenfeld), Sim
then transforms himself into Frog, who must battle the giant underground Worm
in order to prevent an earthquake in Tokyo that would be more devastating than
the Kobe quake. However, he needs the help of a nearly anonymous bank employee,
Takatsuki (Juhn again), to fight and vanquish Worm.
These
two stories are deftly played out to the accompaniment of Jason McDermott on cello and Jeff Wichmann on koto. Seated on an upstage
platform behind a scrim, they play snatches of Schubert and the Beatles as well as music by sound
designers Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman. Accented by James F. Ingalls' lighting, James Schuette's set is simple but flexible
with its glossy black floor, black table and three black chairs within a red
frame.
Although
Galati's pacing in the 80-minute, intermissionless play lags in a couple of
places, the acting by this ensemble cast is uniformly excellent. The stories
are both charming and engrossing, reflecting on the redemptive power of love
and art as antidotes to fear and loneliness.