Theatre
A Kyogen Falstaff: The Braggart Samurai

Adaptation: Yasunari Takahashi
Director: Mansaku Nomura
Suke-emon Horato (Falstaff): Mansaku Nomura
Tara Kaja (Bardolph): Takeshi Nomura
Jiro Kaja (Pistol): Haruo Tsukizaki
Yakbei (Ford): Mannosuke Nomura
Omatsu (Mistress Ford): Yukio Ishida
Otake (Mistress Page): Shichisaku Ogawa
Koken (Stage Assistant): Ryosaku Nomura
Fue (flute): Takayuki Isso
Taiko (drum): Hitoshi Sakuraoi.

The Playhouse

Sir John Falstaff is Shakespeare’s big comic success. Hot with appetite, ripe with laughter, he is ego made flesh- and a force of life itself. Banish plump Jack and you banish all the world, he admonishes the young Prince Hal. And when the big man does get his marching orders in Henry V Part II it generates such sentiment that it almost tilts the play. Fortunately Shakespeare was canny enough to write one further play as vehicle for his reckless weightwatcher- the citizen comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

With its vivacious good humour, its reversals of power and its gags at fat Jack’s expense, Merry Wives provides ideal material for Yasunari Takahashi’s adaptation to kyogen, the fifteenth century Japanese comic form which literally translates as `word crazy.’ Performed by an all male cast and accompanied by two musicians on stage, The Braggart Samurai is proof of the universality, not only of the character, but of the comic intrigues of the plot. Suke-emon Horata, the big-bellied sake soak has once more run out of money. His plan is to woo two matrons, Omatsu and Otake, in the hope of coaxing some yen as well as some yearnings but, warned by his servants, they contrive to turn the tables instead. Omatsu’s jealous husband also gets tangled in events -to the evident relish of all.

Set on an empty stage except for the traditional kyogen pine tree at the back, the play is beautifully spare and fresh. There are minimal props- the jealous husband wields a long knife at one stage, and dodders in with a stick at another – and make-up, except for Horato’s huge fringed beard and red cheeks, is virtually non-existent. Scene changes are heralded by the musicians’ chanting, drumbeats and shrill notes on a flute. The actors’ movement is both disciplined and playfully nimble. Mansuka Nomura, as Horata, almost floats as he bounds about the stage and the scene when he is carried in a laundry basket- depicted only by a pole hefted between his two servants, with the fully visible Horata bumping along in the middle- is astonishingly apt and fluent.

But the Braggart Samurai is more than skilful pantomime. The text, available in surtitles with the production, is unexpectedly quirky in its wit. Takahashi enjoys plenty of intertextual jokes at the bard’s expense. There is reference to `some philosophical coward’ declaiming to be or not to be, and the variant – frailty thy name is wife. There are allusions to Romeo and Juliet and even to the witches’ doggerel in Macbeth. The language is generally boisterous and jokey as when one of the servants who keeps serving up homilies to meet every occasion suddenly complains that he has run out of old sayings.

Running just sixty minutes- an extension of the usually shorter kyogen form- The Braggart Samurai is richly funny and full of verbal surprise. And while the women and servants get their laughs, Horata, the lord of misrule is not down for long. His promises to reform are the thinnest thing about him. The first to the banquet and the last to the battlefield he is a sook and bounder- and unmistakably a part of everyone. All the world’s a bit of a joke, he crows as he dances his final song, and all the men and women merely jesters. Plump Jack would drink to that one.

The Australian, March 11, 1994.