TRANCE
By Shoji Kokami Wed 6 - Sat 30 Jun, 2007When a chance meeting reunites three old school friends, now making their living as a struggling writer, a psychiatrist and a drag artist, they are all too eager to get reaquainted. But as the stories they tell each other become more and more surreal - from unrequited passions and split personalitities to male eunuchs and escaped Japanese Emperors - they start to question their own and each other's sanity with hilarious consequences.
What the papers say
creatives
Direction - Shoji Kokami
Dramaturg - Tony Bicât
Design - Bob Bailey
Lighting Design - Malcolm Rippeth
Sound Design - Jack Arnold
cast includes
Stephen Darcy
Meredith Macneill
Rhashan Stone
details
'Yukio Ninagawa has described the 48-year-old writer-director Shoji Kokami as 'the leading figure of his generation in Japanese theatre'. Kokami has come to the Bush to direct a crack trio of English-language actors in Trance, a surreal comedy that has been a massive hit in Japan since its premiere in 1993.
The production is expertly directed and beautifully performed. It combines quirky playfulness and philosophical sadness in its treatment of social alienation, unstable identity and the relativity of truth.'
The Independent