It's an engaging start to this piece devised by the directer, author and choreographer: Chiharu. Company Men, that peculiar section of Japanese society who have sold their souls to their employers and become corporate slaves enter the auditorium and introduce themselves to the audience. Unless you speak Japanese you won't understand a thing but it's a great way to break the ice and the fawning reverence of these Company Men is funny.
This show is a mix of mime, dance, acrobatics, aerials, juggling just about everything, except singing! It explores the world of the Company Man, an icon of the industrial success and stifling cultural demands of Japan from 1960's onwards. Through mime, tableau and scenes performed with a strong physical element the actors expose the seething pressure that exists just below the smiling exterior of this strange group. Stress, jealousy, office sexual politics, back stabbing, buck passing and rejection. Beneath the suited, booted and calm exterior of these individuals all is not well.
The show has a metre with scenes quickly moving on and melding into one another. The arc of the Company Man's life is examined from morning to night. The home, the train journey into work, the office, each one of these is dissected and the 'quiet desperation' as Henry David Thoreau described these 'ordinary' lives bubbles to the surface every time. The show is full of moments of pathos and inventive humour. Occasionally some physicality is shoe horned in which is more intrusive than expressive and doesn't seem necessary, they also struggle with limitations of the performance space they have. But these are minor niggles in an otherwise good show.
Everyone from child to adult will enjoy this show. Barely an English word is spoken and yet such is the eloquence and expressive nature of their interpretive movement we can follow and understand the story, this is quite an accomplishment and a tribute to the actors and creator.
Runs to 26 Aug, 4.45pm