Complicité’s new endeavour, Shun-kin, is a tale of love, obsession, devotion, and selflessness – one that will stay with me for a long time. It is based on two works by Japanese writer Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, the short story A Portrait of Shunkin and the essay “In Praise of Shadows” exploring the relation between light and darkness, the mysterious pleasure of seeing without seeing and the idea of a secret, furtive and clandestine passion. We are called to witness the life and death of a blind shamisen player of aristocratic descent, Shunkin, and her loyal attendant, Sasuke. As the narrator puts it, rather crudely: “Shunkin is a sadist – as in S&M.” But the mistress-servant relationship is portrayed by Complicité in its most archetypal, brutal and poetic stance.
Shun-kin is played by a Japanese cast in the original language, merging western dramatic conventions with Japanese theatre traditions. Let’s face it, it’s annoying to be asked to read surtitles during a performance, especially if the work is a visual piece by a British company. Is Complicité being pretentious here? My answer is no. Indeed, in the first half hour it’s difficult to keep up with reading and watching at the same time. The narrative isn’t simple and the surtitles are placed at the two sides of the stage, so one can only do one thing at a time: either read or watch the performance. But this mechanism builds up an alienating distance between the audience and the play, which makes what happens on stage mythical and otherworldly: it simply makes it more magic.
If you think about it, the story of Shun-kin and Sasuke is virtually untranslatable, like signatures and proper names. It is so closely connected to Japanese culture that it would become a completely different thing in translation. Among sliding doors and caged singing birds, shamisen and kimonos, this love story of sheer self-denial and blind self-affirmation happened in Japanese and it can only be told in the same language, with its rhythm, cadences and musicality.
A contemporary narrative frame (already in Tanizaki’s book, but perhaps not the most successful aspect of the show) and the use of Japanese Bunraku puppets implement the estrangement effect. As the story progresses, the blind protagonist slowly becomes a flesh-and-blood woman: first, as a young girl, she is embodied by a puppet controlled by no less than three women puppeteers, who are always oddly around when she attends her secret encounters with Sasuke, moving her limbs as though she were a living creature and giving her a strident, petulant voice. Then, as a young lady, she is played by a woman wearing a neutral mask, but still restrained by the puppeteers; lastly, the main puppeteer transforms herself into Shunkin. A journey towards a shameful desire makes Shunkin human – and condemns her to even more humiliating suffering.
There are moments of pure poetry in this show, such as when Shunkin (still a puppet) and Sasuke first have sex, when she gives birth to their first child, and when Sasuke blinds himself. Everything takes place on a dimly-lit stage, where a shady ambiguity mesmerises our imagination much more than clarity.
Is this wild orientalism? I see this as an attempt to explore difference from within, to embody it. But it would be interesting to hear what other people have to say about Shun-Kin.
