Tag Archives: Yu Murai

UNDER THE RADAR: HAMLET | TOILET

Hamlet (Takuro Takasaki) is in desperate need of a bowel movement in HAMLET | TOILET (photo © Maria Baranova)

HAMLET | TOILET
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 10-13, $35
japansociety.org

To go, or not to go? That is the multilayered question asked in Yu Murai and Kaimaku Pennant Race’s absurdist, scatological HAMLET | TOILET, continuing at Japan Society through January 13 as part of the Under the Radar festival.

As you enter Japan Society, you are greeted by a different kind of step and repeat; instead of posing in front of a show logo, you can snap a selfie with a glitteringly white Japanese Toto washlet on a red platform, a fancy toilet with such special features as a heated seat and a bidet. It sets the mood for what is to follow, ninety minutes of controlled chaos involving more flatulence than the beans scene in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles.

Murai has previously reimagined works by William Shakespeare in Romeo and Toilet and Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth, wildly unpredictable tales that incorporate dance, music, strange props, and bizarre costumes. HAMLET | TOILET sits comfortably within that oeuvre. The production takes place in and around a three-stall installation, an open cube with a back wall and no doors. The three actors, Takuro Takasaki, G. K. Masayuki, and Yuki Matsuo, are dressed in unflattering white body-hugging latex suits reminiscent of the spermatozoa in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask).

Plenty of flatulence is on the menu in unique adaptation of Hamlet at Japan Society (photo © Maria Baranova)

The essence of the Bard’s tragedy is in there, somewhere: Hamlet’s (Takasaki) uncle, Claudius (Masayuki), has killed Hamlet’s father, married his mother, and become king. Hamlet is in love with Ophelia (Masayuki), whose brother, expert fencer Laertes (Matsuo), is not a Hamlet fan. Hamlet’s besties, Horatio (Masayuki) and Marcellus (Matsuo), have encountered the ghost of their friend’s father, who tells his son that his murder must be avenged. To do so, Hamlet has to face his conscience, which is not lodged in his brain or heart but in his painful belly — the load he is carrying is an intensifying bowel movement that his multidimensional constipation will not allow him to release.

For much of the show, the actors are in the middle stall, trying to take dumps, either squatting by themselves or sitting on a cushiony human bowl formed by the other two actors. They gleefully pass gas that is projected in colorful animation by Takashi Kawasaki, accompanied by the appropriate sounds. The characters discuss aspects of making number two in ways that no play or novel that I know of ever has; no bathroom subject or feces joke is off limits, regardless of how silly or lowbrow. Nobody can find relief, not even from Ophelia’s headdress, which consists of dozens of rolls of toilet paper.

Amid deep dives into the shape, consistency, aroma, and chocolatey nature of human waste, Murai also delves into cowardice, sanity, suffering, and revenge. The dialogue is similarly mixed; Hamlet veterans will appreciate such real Shakespearean lines as “That adulterate beast won to his shameful lust . . . my queen,” “Never make known what you have seen [and heard] tonight,” “[I am going to] put an antic disposition on,” and “I should have fatted all the region kites / With this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain!”

Purists might grimace at the more coarse language, such as “Something must be born that will trace a single line / like a magnificent line of feces / straight through all of this wonderful society,” “Please, just this once / couldn’t it be soft and gently flow like water,” “You must cleanly and completely defecate me!” and “In a world that is moved by the strict laws of almighty God / that which should not have moved has passed / That’s why my movement will not pass!” Even the subtitles themselves are in on the fun, changing the spelling and capitalization of nec-ASS-arily and BUTT (instead of but).

The three actors occasionally break out into song and dance; the music is by DJ and hip-hop producer Tsutchie from Shakkazombie, with hilarious choreography by Shinnosuke Motoyama. There’s far too much repetition, as numerous jokes spew out like the preparation for a colonoscopy, and in one scene the play makes fun of that itself as repeated statements fill up the subtitles monitor in ever-smaller type. But just when you think the production is merely a fart-fantasy concocted by Eric Cartman or Beavis and Butt-Head, Murai slips in something ridiculously clever so you won’t lose your appetite; it’s not merely Shakespeare as bathroom reading, although that’s in there too. Murai is not claiming that Shakespeare, or theater in general, is full of shit, but it might be in need of a thorough cleansing.

Which brings us back to the original question: To go, or not to go? HAMLET | TOILET is certainly not for everyone; some gags were met with laughter and applause, while others received random chuckles or guffaws — or silence. If you do get a ticket — the January 12 performance will be followed by an artist Q&A — be sure to use the facilities, which have several washlets, in addition to doors to ASSure your privacy.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

UNDER THE RADAR 2024: TOP FIVE

Get tickets to such shows as Volcano at the Under the Radar festival before time runs out (photo by Emijlia Jefrehmova)

UNDER THE RADAR 2024
Multiple venues
January 5-21
utrfest.org

There was quite an uproar in June when Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis announced the cancellation of the widely popular Under the Radar festival, which the Public had hosted since 2006. Held every January, the series featured a diverse collection of unique and unusual international theatrical productions, discussions, and live music and dance, from the strange to the familiar, the offbeat to the downright impossible to describe. Eustis followed that outcry with another message:

“Last week, difficult news was shared that the Under the Radar festival would not return for the Public’s 23–24 season. We made the painful decision to place the festival on hiatus. I understand and share the hurt that those who participated in and loved the festival have expressed over the past few days. . . . Unfortunately, these are exceptionally challenging times in our field. The Public, like almost every other nonprofit theater in the country, is facing serious financial pressure. . . . In the certainty that better times will come, we continue to work to preserve the health and mission of the Public. We look forward to a time when we can fully expand back into the robust and expansive theater we need to be.”

Festival founder and director Mark Russell was determined that the show must go on, and he brought it back to life. “Festivals are celebrations. They mark harvests and other moments of abundance or recognition,” he said in a statement. “Under the Radar is a festival that each year celebrates the vibrancy of new theater, in New York and internationally. At this moment, even in very challenging times, there is still innovative work rising from communities around New York and in far-reaching parts of the globe. Under the Radar aims to spotlight this work for audiences — not only those ‘in the know’ but from a wider stretch of communities, diverse in all respects, that could benefit by engaging with these creative leaders.”

The 2024 program includes two dozen presentations at seventeen venues, taking place from January 5 to 21. Below are my top five choices, which do not include two highly praised and strongly recommended works that are making encore appearances in New York, Dmitry Krimov/Krymov Lab NYC’s Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: In Our Own Words at BRIC and Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s bilingual Public Obscenities at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. In addition, the UFO sidebar of works in progress consist of Matt Romein’s Bag of Worms at Onassis ONX Studio, Zora Howard’s The Master’s Tools at Chelsea Factory (with Okwui Okpokwasili as Tituba from The Crucible), Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon’s How does it feel to look at nothing at National Sawdust, Theater in Quarantine and Sinking Ship Productions’ live debut of the previously streamed The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy at the Connelly Theater, Jenn Kidwell and *the Blackening’s We Come to Collect [A Flirtation, with Capitalism] at the Flea, and Penny Arcade’s The Art of Becoming — Episode 3: Superstar Interrupted [1967-1973] at Joe’s Pub. In addition, a free symposium at NYU Skirball Center on January 12 at 9:30 am features Inge Ceustermans, Hana Sharif, Sunny Jain, Taylor Mac, Jeremy O. Harris, Ravi Jain, and Kaneza Schaal, hosted by Edgar Miramontes, looking at the future of independent theater.

A book club offers unique insight into Miranda July’s The First Bad Man (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

THE FIRST BAD MAN
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Samuel Rehearsal Studio, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza
January 5-13, choose-what-you-pay (suggested admission $35)
www.lincolncenter.org
www.panpantheatre.com

Ireland’s Pan Pan Theatre has staged unique versions of Beckett’s Embers and Cascando as well as Gina Moxley’s The Patient Gloria. The company now turns its attention on a unique aspect of literature; for The First Bad Man at Lincoln Center’s Samuel Rehearsal Studio, audience members watch a book club dissect Miranda July’s wildly original 2015 novel, as characters and story lines intersect with reality.

A bouncy castle becomes more than just a fun children’s place in Nile Harris’s this house is not a home (photo by Alex Munro)

this house is not a home
Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 6-14, $30.05
www.abronsartscenter.org

A bouncy castle helps Nile Harris explore how the world has changed over the last two years, with the assistance of Crackhead Barney, Malcolm-x Betts, slowdanger, and GENG PTP along with a gingerbread minstrel, vape addicts, a movie cowboy, and others, in this house is not a home. Afropessimism is on the menu in this collaboration between Abrons Art Center and Ping Chong Company.

Hamlet | Toilet makes its NYC debut at Japan Society (photo courtesy Kaimaku Pennant Race)

HAMLET | TOILET
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 10-13, $35
japansociety.org

In 2019, Yu Murai and Kaimaku Pennant Race blew our minds with the outrageous Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth, a bizarrely entertaining mashup of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. They’re now back with another mad mix at Japan Society; I’m not sure there’s much more to say that what’s in the press release: “Notoriously iconoclastic and scatological director Yu Murai’s Hamlet | Toilet runs the Bard’s highbrow tale of existential woe through the poop chute.” Each ticket comes with free same-day admission to the exhibition “Out of Bounds: Japanese Women Artists in Fluxus.”

VOLCANO
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
January 10-21, $54
stannswarehouse.org

Melding theater, dance, and sci-fi, Irish writer, director, and choreographer Luke Murphy (Slow Tide, Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte) introduces audiences to the mysterious Amber Project in this four-part miniseries of forty-five-minute multimedia segments starring Murphy and Will Thompson, exploring their past as they face an uncertain future.

OUR CLASS
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 12 – February 4, $68-$139
www.bam.org
ourclassplay.com

During the pandemic, Igor Golyak and Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre broke through with innovative, interactive livestreamed productions, attracting such stalwarts as Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov to join the troupe. Following shows at BAC and Lincoln Center, the company brings a timely new adaptation of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class to BAM, about a 1941 pogrom in Poland that severely impacts the relationships of a group of students. Broadway veterans Richard Topol, Alexandra Silber, and Gus Birney star, alongside Jewish and non-Jewish cast and crew members from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ASHITA NO MA-JOE: ROCKY MACBETH

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
May 15-18, $28
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.kpr.tokyo

Theater Company Kaimaku Pennant Race founder Yu Murai’s Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth is silly fun, a goofy comic mash-up of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the late 1960s manga Ashita no Joe (“Tomorrow’s Joe”). Continuing at Japan Society through May 18, it’s a riotous twist on both stories that creates something fresh and new — and completely wild and unpredictable. The show takes place in and around a light-blue boxing ring onstage, open on two sides, along which the audience of no more than sixty sits. Inside the ring is a second, much smaller ring, with a malleable, flexible mat that occasionally is lifted to reveal various characters, bits of scenery, and video of a koi pond by Kazuki Watanabe. To get you in the mood as you enter the empty theater, audio plays of Steve Albert, Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, and former champ Bobby Czyz calling the November 1998 championship bout between Ricardo “Finito” Lopez and Rosendo Alvarez. Beer, wine, and popcorn is available for purchase and can be consumed during the performance, as if you’re in a boxing arena. The three actors, Takuro Takasaki (Macbeth), G. K. Masayuki (Banquo), and Kazuma Takeo (Lady Macbeth), wear absurdly tight head-to-foot costumes that are a mix of wrestling uniforms and the sperm characters from Woody Allen’s Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex.

The dialogue can be seen on two monitors — unfortunately placed at angles that make it difficult to read and follow the action onstage simultaneously — but it’s not critical to catch every word, as there is a lot of repetition and exposition. The sixty-minute show features key plot points and quotes from Macbeth, including the witches’ prophecies and Macbeth’s rise to the top — to become both king and yokozuna — as he goes after King Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff; however, in this version, Lady Macbeth is not as central to his quest. There are also elements of Ashita no Joe, with such characters as Woolf and Joe, as well as tips of the hat to legendary sumo wrestler Kitanoumi and boxer Wajima Koichi. Along the way, Macbeth displays his boxing skills with the “back-spinning uppercut,” “triple cross counter,” and other punches and jabs and starts seeing apparitions of the men he has vanquished. “The boxing ring howls and calls for fresh blood,” one declares. There are also anachronistic pop culture references, a shaky-looking scaffold that serves as the castle (and where writer-director Murai runs things), and a battle scene in which six members of the audience need special protection. (We strongly suggest you sit in the seats warning about pebbles.) As with even the best boxers, not everything hits its mark, but more than enough does to score a knockout, a crazy, unusual immersive Shakespeare adaptation from a company that previously brought us Romeo and Toilet and King Lear, Sadaharu. There’s no telling what wonderful nonsense they’ll be up to next, but we’ll be there.

ASHITA NO MA-JOE: ROCKY MACBETH

Shakespeare meets manga in the boxing ring in Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth at Japan Society (photo © Takashi Ikemura)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
May 15-18, $28
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Theater Company Kaimaku Pennant Race founder Yu Murai transforms Japan Society into a boxing arena in Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth, running May 15-18. The sixty-minute show is a seriocomic mash-up of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the late 1960s manga Ashita no Joe (“Tomorrow’s Joe”), written by Ikki Kajiwara (Asao Takamori) and illustrated by Tetsuya Chiba and which was turned into several anime series and anime and live-action films. The title translates roughly to “Tomorrow No Witch,” referencing the witches of Macbeth as well as one of the play’s most famous monologues. The protagonist is Joe Yabuki, aka Rocky Macbeth, an ambitious troubled teen who finds success in the ring — and there will be an actual boxing ring onstage, with an audience of only sixty people sitting around it. The boxers wear funky-weird head-to-toe costumes over five rounds of battles as Macbeth seeks the crown, as king and champion.

“We also have been believing in a false sense of security / that is nothing more than a prophecy. / The Birnam Wood has already started to move. / What will the witches whisper to us, / the people who have been pretending not to notice? / What will we whisper to the future Macbeths to come?” Yu Murai writes, fusing themes of postwar Japan with the 1960s counterculture, one of his specialties. (At the 2009 Fringe Festival, the company had fun with Romeo and Toilet, complete with toilet paper rolls and bathroom humor.) The cast features Takuro Takasaki, G. K. Masayuki, and Kazuma Takeo, with video design and operation by Kazuki Watanabe; opening night will be followed by a Meet-the-Artists reception. The presentation is being held in conjunction with the Japan Society exhibition “Radicalism in the Wilderness: Japanese Artists in the Global 1960s,” which continues through May 31; Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth tickets get you half off gallery admission.