©Courtesy of Momo Akashi
Japanese-born playwright and lyricist Momo Akashi has recently been establishing a reputation on the New York theater scene for pieces that portray characters in the throes of existential crisis. A devotee of the films of Hayao Miyazaki, she has said that themes like reverence for nature, the omnipresence of the supernatural, and the search for beauty.
Her latest offering, Letter, premiered on June 25 on Theatre Row as a finalist in the 23rd Downtown Urban Arts Festival. Letter comes just two months after the global premiere of VOICE, a longer piece that premiered as part of the Time Capsule project at New York’s Chain Theatre. Although both pieces offer incisive portraits of people dealing with crises in their lives. VOICE was also a more elaborate production, featuring three characters as opposed to the single character in Letter.
The two productions also differ markedly in tone. Letter is more lighthearted, even comedic, while VOICE is far more angst-ridden. Set in a hospital, the latter play focuses on a young man battling cancer and a young woman awaiting surgery after her throat was slashed in a brutal attack by the very doctor who is treating them. The solo character in Letter, by contrast, tells his story from a markedly different perspective Even though he has also suffered emotional trauma
. Directed by Saki Kawamura and starring Viet Vo, Letter focuses on the struggles of a thirtysomething Japanese schoolteacher seeking to escape his troubled past that includes sexual assault while he was involved in Tokyo’s pornographic underword. Like Akashi’s earlier piece, VOICE, this 30-minute vignette deftly probes the raw emotions of a character trying to come to terms with uncomfortable realities as he moves forward in life.
According to its official synopsis, ” Letter is a solo play featuring Shin, a former Japanese teacher and porn actor, who writes a letter to his mother while on a plane to Los Angeles. As he pens his thoughts, Shin reflects on his journey—his struggles with meeting his mother’s expectations, the conflict between his sense of duty and his own desires. Through conversations with his mother. … Letter reveals Shin’s gradual acceptance of his true identity and his complex relationship with her.”
Viet Vo, who portrays Shin in this thoughtful dramatic monologue, describes himself as “an actor whose intimidating presence belies an ability to work well outside his physical type.” A balding, somewhat chubby figure at variance with the idealized image of porn stats, Vo is just right for the role of Shin, to which he brings a disarming sense of humor. He recalls, for example, confessing to his mother during a family dinner of “lukewarm curry” that he’d first kissed another man.
Shin continues, telling her of his growing addiction to online pornography: “As I navigated through the layers of mysterious windows,” he writes, “a utopian world unfolded before me. There were two white men with beautiful blue eyes. Making love naked in front of the world. Wow, they must be angels.”.'”.’”
Letter also casts a critical eye on some of those all-too-familiar stereotypes that Westerners typically hold about the Japanese—that they are mindless conformists who are too “spiritual” to engage in sexual activity. In writing Letter, Momo Akashi once again displays a keen appreciation for flesh and its discontents.
As Akashi earlier wrote about VOICE: “Even living in a vibrant city like New York, it’s not easy to live true to what we want to do. That’s why I wrote a story about characters who are honest about what they want. It doesn’t mean that following hearts is the greatest thing in life, but I hope that the audience will enjoy meeting characters who are very pure, innocent and true to what they want.”
Rating: A
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Rating: A
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