Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Toshiki Okada’s TIME’S JOURNEY THROUGH A ROOM is an austere, haunting meditation on loss

• By drediman
• May 27, 2018
• No Comments

Kensaku Shinohara and Yuki Kawahisa in PlayCo’s production of “Time’s Journey Through a Room” by Toshiki Okada at A.R.T./New York Theatres.

This afternoon, I took in a performance of Toshiki Okada’s new play Time’s Journey Through a Room at A.R.T/New York Theatres, courtesy of PlayCo. In recent years, PlayCo has been a dependable presenter of productions that have engaged the senses in exciting and unexpectedly out-of-the-box ways. In recent years, they’ve collaborated with venerable Off-Broadway institutions (e.g., LaMama, Ars Nova, and Soho Rep) to present striking, uniquely theatrical production such as Caught, The Wildness, Sleep, and generations. 

Now we have their staging of Mr. Okada’s Time’s Journey Through a Room, which happily continues this trend. Set about a year after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, the play tells the story of a man coping with a double dosage of loss (no spoilers here). Mr. Okada’s spare, poetic play is saturated with internal emotional intensity. There are just some things that cannot be done justice by mere language.

Director Dan Rothenberg understands this. Indeed, his understated but pristinely staged and designed production calls to mind the austere aesthetics that mark the works of Richard Maxwell (deep pregnant pauses, unaffected acting), as well as traditional Japanese noh theater. The result is a haunting piece of theater that expands in your head the more you think of it. As for the production’s trio of actors – Maho Honda, Yuki Kawahisa, and Kensaku Shinohara – they’ve mastered the sly, soulful, reserved soul of the Japanese culture.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

TIME’S JOURNEY THROUGH A ROOM
Off-Broadway, Play
PlayCo at A.R.T/New York Theatres
1 hour (without an intermission)
Through June 10