Everybody dances to his or her own drummer in the plays of Toshiki Okada, and it?s a lonely, spastic beat each of them hears. The characters who appear in ?Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech? ? a triptych of short plays at Japan Society, directed in hypnotic style by Mr. Okada ? may be the most gracefully graceless people in town.
Embodied by an impeccably drilled cast of six, the office workers in these related comedies seem confined to isolated universes, shaped by rhythms of thought and feeling that rarely overlap what?s around them. When they speak ? in the fragmented, circular monologues that pass for conversation among them ? they jerk, twitch and undulate in movements that are seldom in sync with what they?re saying.
Self-centered, socially inept fellow workers are of course familiar to Americans, both from personal experience (though certainly not mine, boss) and sitcoms like ?The Office.? But you?re unlikely to have encountered the precisely ritualized forms that such solipsism and discomfort take on in the work of Mr. Okada?s Chelfitsch Theater Company.
Chelfitsch, by the way, is a fanciful mutilation of the English word ?selfish,? said as a baby would pronounce it. And chelfitschness would seem to define each of the figures portrayed here: four office temps and two full-time workers portrayed by Taichi Yamagata, Riki Takeda, Mari Ando, Kei Namba, Saho Ito and Fumie Yokoo.
In ?Air Conditioning? (first performed here in 2009), a sly tour de force of absurdist vaudeville, a man and a woman discuss how very cold the office is. Or rather, she does. Though he responds with dutiful interjections of ?ahh,? which pop from his mouth like balls from a pre-set tennis machine, he is happiest when expressing his opinions in the aggressive style of speech favored by politicians on talk shows. He clearly has learned something from watching them.
In ?Hot Peppers,? which opens the show, three of the temps plan a goodbye party for another worker, who has been laid off. (They expect to follow her shortly and are obviously more interested in the parties that will be given for them.)
We meet the departing worker in ?The Farewell Speech,? in which she soliloquizes about preparing for her last day at the office. None of her listeners seem to find it strange that this hilariously sad account includes descriptions of anthropomorphized footwear (she thinks of her high heels as mated penguins) and a dead cicada. Then again, nobody is probably really listening.
In a program note Mr. Okada ? who is celebrated as a chronicler of Japan?s ?Generation Y,? which grew up amid financial uncertainty ? writes that he now sees these plays as ?quite cynical.? He adds that since last year?s earthquake and tsunami, he has become aware of problems in his society that make him ?feel the need to transcend my own past cynicism.?
This is remarkably stylish cynicism, though, and a far cry from Western-style knee-jerk irony. The ceremonial jitteriness of each performance, underscored by restless percussive jazz, conveys both endless ennui and uneasiness. And though the plays are performed in Japanese, with English supertitles, the expressive, sui generis physicality of the actors requires no translation.
HOT PEPPER, AIR CONDITIONER, AND THE FAREWELL SPEECH
Written and directed by Toshiki Okada, translated by Aya Ogawa, with supertitling by Radar L.A.; lighting by Tomomi Ohira and Naoko Ito; sound by Ayumu Okubo; produced by Akane Nakamura; stage manager, So Azaki. In Japanese, with English supertitles. A Chelfitsch Theater Company production, presented by Japan Society as part of the Under the Radar festival. At Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, Manhattan; (212) 715-1258, japansociety.org. Through Jan. 14. Running time: 1 hour 5 minutes.
WITH: Taichi Yamagata, Riki Takeda, Mari Ando, Saho Ito, Kei Namba and Fumie Yokoo.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=897c2329c69de8339f7db3d03d2b1c06
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