Kiyotsune and Pagoda
Purcell Rooms, South Bank, London
Billed as the first modern Japanese Noh play by an English playwright to be staged in London, the two performances of Pagoda at the Purcell Rooms on the South Bank attracted a sell-out audience.
Noh is a classical and highly stylised form of Japanese drama dating back seven centuries. The simple stage setting is a backdrop depicting a pine tree – symbol of longevity in Japanese culture. The actors are masked and dressed in elaborate traditional costumes. They glide around the stage, kneeling and rising with graceful solemnity. Their chanted words are accompanied by an eight-man chorus and a group of musicians known as
the “Hayashi” – a flautist and two or three drummers, who punctuate the action with their own cries and groans.
There is no contact between the characters. As the drama intensifies, they manifest emotion by a stamp of the foot or fierce flick of a flowing sleeve, while the chanting of the chorus becomes faster and more agitated. Words and sounds combine together to create a drowning sense of resignation; a gut-wrenching lament for the pain that saturates the human condition.
Pagoda is the work of London-born writer Jannette Cheong. And what is both brave and remarkable is the way she has combined a rigidly formal drama style with an intimate, personal story. It concerns a woman’s journey to China to trace the family of her dead father. There she encounters the ghost of her grandmother, who sent her son away as a boy to escape famine and whose spirit has watched sorrowfully for his return ever since.
Cheong’s own story is amazing enough. Daughter of a Chinese emigrant father and Japanese/Jewish mother, she grew up in the East End of London as one of 12 children. After her father died in 1974, never having returned to his native country and not even knowing how old he was, she made her pilgrimage to China to find their family and work in the fields during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
During the intervening years, Cheong has examined her roots through poetry and short stories. But within the elegant economy of the Noh play she seems to have finally found the medium that satisfies her. “The writing of Pagoda has enabled me to explore who I am and where I come from”, she says. “It has also helped me to understand that migration is as old as mankind itself.”
Pagoda was preceded by part of a classical Noh play, Kiyotsune, a tragic tale of love and betrayal which provided both an introduction to and contrast with the simplicity of Cheong’s work. While all the performances were impressive, the unmasked Jubilith Moore, as the young traveller, was outstanding for her dignified emotional intensity.
The performances were a joint production by the Oshima Noh Theatre, and the Theatre Nohgaku, set up in 2000 to promote the Noh tradition among international audiences. Nohgaku founder Richard Emmert wrote the music for Pagoda and members of the Oshima family were among the cast. Cheong’s play, contrary to the traditional work, ends with triumph over tragedy. The bereaved mother never finds her son in this life, but the whole family is reunited in the eternal realm of the spirits. With the benefit of the libretto, the audience could enjoy the lean poetry of Cheong’s words. But combined on stage with the mesmeric effect of chanting voices and slow, understated movement, one was left wondering how so much could be conveyed with such economy of expression.
Kate Holman
