Murray Bramwell

Mizumachi
Ishinha Theatre Company.
Written and directed by Yukichi Matsumoto. Designed by Yuji Hayashida. Music and sound by Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Kazuyuki Matsamura. Lighting by Kiyokazu Kakizaki
Torrens Parade Ground
Adelaide, until 17 March.

Mizumachi is the water city, a floating shanty town in the emerging industrial city of Osaka in1905. Here poor rural migrants come from the Southern Islands of Ryukyu to find work, ekeing out a living along the canals, pilfering iron and collecting junk. Orphaned, and alone, Nao meets Takeru when he rescues her sister Kana from drowning in the canal. Yoshimatsu grows melons, others keep pigs. Masamori is carefully building a model battleship, a group of men get drunk on memories of home.

But like the inhabitants of Coketown in Dickens’ Hard Times, or figures in L.S. Lowry’s industrial landscapes, the characters are dwarfed by the enormity of the machine culture around them. In a specially constructed outdoor venue in Adelaide’s centrally-located Torrens parade ground, Ishinha’s director Yukichi Matsumoto and designer Yuji Hayashida have created a performance space more like a movie soundstage than a theatre.

It is vast. A widescreen vista of a city of soot and smoke. Under lowering black clouds and against a giant pop-up picture book skyline of chimneys and dark satanic mills, the characters act out their tiny destinies against starvation and plague, typhoons and clearance by government edict. Mizumachi presents us with a complete world of shanties, house boats, foundries and spinning mills. And there is water everywhere- a canal one minute, an entire stage flooded the next.

There is, however, an energy and buoyancy to the lives of these new Osakans. The opening scene has a vibrancy as the creamy Edwardian parasols and top hats of the dignatories are contrasted by the brown cloth caps and aprons of the worker army. It is like a Chinese opera from the Cultural Revolution, driven by pulsing techno beats, garnished, in live performance by composer and musician, Kazuhisa Uchihashi.

The forty-one strong cast moves in mass choreography accompanied by chants and counting, their repetitions a mix of constructivist movement Meyerhold would have been proud of, and perky dance routines from girl pop bands like Shonen Knife and middle period Kylie. Which is to say that Mizumachi is a richly tangled mix of contemporary performance and music styles.
Described as a Jan Jan Opera- refering to a working class district in Osaka- Mizumachi communicates with its pantomime acting, its danceclub music, and the sentimentality of its themes.

When there is individual dialogue we are desperately diving into our synopses for help. When there are big production numbers – entitled The Furnace, The Spinning Factory and Typhoon – we are in the grip of elements of music, design, movement that are universally, and edibly operatic. Adelaide is the lucky first audience to witness this extraordinary production- undoubtedly, a Festival high-water mark.

The Australian Arts Review, March 5, 2000.