• サド侯爵夫人 (Madame de Sade)

1/18/26 (Sun), Tokyo

Mishima Yukio’s typically talky drama has its fans: it was selected by Japanese critics back in 1994 as the nation’s best play of the postwar era. (Mishima tied as best writer with the equally prolific Inoue Hisashi of Living With Father fame.) It was written in 1965, just five years before the author’s shocking seppuku – which I mention only because director Miyamoto Amon has decided to include this irrelevant fact as the first line in this production, spoken portentously by the actor who will play the servant (after he has stood facing us on the dark stage for several minutes of utter silence). A starry West End production some years back put critics to sleep, though a Swedish rendering by Ingmar Bergman, available on YouTube, is held in some esteem.

This production had two selling points. One, the six-woman show is played by an all-male cast, a technique that Japanese directors turn to occasionally. Second, the lead, Narimiya Hiroki, is making his comeback after abruptly quitting show business several years earlier over horrific media bullying regarding his private life. (As it happens, Higashide Masahiro, who plays the horny countess, is himself coming off an adultery scandal, which somehow feels appropriate for this piece.)

The author based the work on the historical fact that the Marquise de Sade waited devotedly for 12 years for her famously demented husband to be released from prison, only to refuse to see him ever again once he was finally out. The play examines this through the lives of six women, each representing a different side of French society (wifely devotion, social status, religion, etc). Continue reading →