Barbican - Shun-kin

"Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides."
Junichiro Tanizaki

SHUN-KIN
Directed by Simon McBurney
Composer Hidetaro Honjo

I visited the Barbican Theatre last night to see a play "Shun-Kin." At first I just wanted to mention that the play was a great experience. So struggling with my common foe, writer's block, I did a little google search and found a scathing review of the piece here. Although the review is laugh out loud funny (in the sense that the reviewer missed everything that was beautiful about the performance and didn't understand a thing) this has compelled me somewhat to talk about the aspects I enjoyed. Wait! I've just read another review, this time by a Guardian reviewer, that also suggests this theatre piece isn't much good!

The piece was Inspired by two texts by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki: 'A Portrait of Shunkin' and 'In Praise of Shadows.' The good news is that the aesthetic theory on which the play is founded only comes up in the final moment. Like all good theory, the evidence is shown to us first followed by a quick commentary about where this might fit. A request at the end of the piece comes to go out into the light; the play of shadow and light was a product of ancestors forced into darkened rooms and the representational art of this experience.

The story itself is not about love, sacrifice and sado-masochism, although those elements are foregrounded. I read things differently. The story is about fantasy in love, about how much of the love between two people fits somewhere between reality and representation and happens backstage and in memories. There is a moment when Sasuke's face is in excruciating pain but he hides this from his master and lover, Shun-Kin. When she calls him to fulfill her demands to come warm her feet, he puts her foot to his pained cheek to cool it down. Angered by his action of helping himself rather than serving her needs (even if the two needs, his and hers, were indeed compatible) she begins to abuse him by repeatedly kicking him in the face. She has been blind since youth and hitting him since she was quite young as well (to discipline him at becoming a better music player). As the puppet Shun-Kin, and her ventriloquist, continues to kick Sasuke and he rolls away, he shares in the abuse with the old version of Sasuke also onstage, and a character who follows the story from the inside (although he remains a shadow of a character). Each of the men takes their place, and Shun-Kin kicks each one rhythmically, over and over again, in time with the shamisen player who is onstage as well. The timing and quality of movement of each man being kicked is perfectly executed and gives an aesthetic quality to the action, and the desire to participate in the memory of the older Shun-Kin is a perfect symbol for what the story is about. This same sequence was derided in one of the reviews so I thought I would try my hand at another take because what I saw completely moved me.


(Next up - a commentary about Hitchcock's "Family Plot")