Reverberations
The Seven Streams of the River Ota (98 Version)
Devised by Ex Machina
Directed by Robert Lepage
Ex Machina
Thebarton Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
When he first visited Hiroshima, a city, a word, synonymous with thermonuclear destruction, Quebecois director Robert Lepage expected to be dismayed by an enduring grimness. Instead he found “a lively, reconstructed modern city with large parks planted with tall trees: a vibrant night life and some of the most interesting contemporary art galleries in the world.” These strong impressions prompted him to portray Hiroshima- in a production commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing- not just as a city of doom, but also one of hope.
Geographically, the seven streams of the River Ota form a delta where the city of Hiroshima stands. For Canadian company Ex Machina’s five and half hour epic, the seven streams are seven interlocking plays which take us from Hiroshima in 1945 to New York, Osaka, Amsterdam, the Terezin concentration camp in 1943 and return us to Hiroshima on the brink of the new century.
The opening scene is of a house in Hiroshima. It is characteristically Japanese, in natural wood tones with a tile roof, verandah, forecourt, and along the front, seven sliding screen doors. This set, designed by Carl Fillion, remains throughout the production and it is on, inside, through and beside these screens that the stories of Ota are told.
Luke O’Connor is a US army photographer, documenting the damage to buildings after the Hiroshima blast. He meets Nozomi, a hibakusha – bomb victim. She asks him to photograph her because there are no mirrors in her house and she doesn’t know how she now looks. She has a ten year old daughter, Hanako, who has been blinded in the explosion. Luke shows Nozomi photos of his wife in Houston, and his son Jeffrey. When Luke returns with the prints, Nozomi, dressed in traditional kimono, makes love with him.
Circling this segment, entitled Moving Pictures, is the story of Madama Butterfly, living in Nagasaki- twin city of destruction- mother of a son to the American, Pinkerton who then takes the child back to America. Luke O’Connor is another conqueror, but he cannot confine himself to his orders and so, a sequence of redeeming actions- like water ripples from a stone- is set in train.
As with Lepage’s 1988 Adelaide Festival show,The Dragon’s Trilogy, a saga of three communities, set in Toronto and spanning some eighty years, The Seven Streams of the River Ota is a threading narrative of coincidences, reunions, consequences and karma. The stories are wish-fulfilments, they are like immigrant romances, and they choose to favour the creative against the destructive, redemption against damnation, fulfilment against regret. The characters are not driven by revenge, or a sense of entitlement, they do not see their ill fortunes as victimhood. You might say that they are without a politics – but, in the context of Lepage’s work and its cumulative theatrical effect, that is unfairly prosaic.
It is New York 1965. The Hiroshima house is now three rooms in a tenement, we peer in, as we do figures in a Hopper painting. The mood in this second section is upbeat. The joint is jumping with beat poets and jazzoids. Luke O’Connor is watching the World Series. He is dying of leukemia and is being nursed by his son Jeffrey, a troubled young man who clashes with another man -a Japanese American also named Jeffrey.
Seven Streams continues in this way. There are continuing motifs. Like the shoes in The Dragon’s Trilogy, or in the case of Ota – the performing arts and photography. American Jeffrey needs money and sells his father’s camera to Japanese Jeffrey, whom he later learns is his brother. An unprocessed camera plate provides a connection. In the tenement bathroom, scene of jazz rehearsals, ablutions, crises and reconciliations, Jeffrey O’Connor teaches Jeffrey Yamashita how to develop photos. Later Ada, a Dutch woman who also stays briefly in the tenement, finds Luke’s photo of Nozomi in a collection in a war museum. Jeffrey, in Amsterdam and dying of AIDS, gives the book to his Japanese brother who describes it to his blind sister.
Robert Lepage and his company have created a work of extraordinary detail and fluency. The pacing varies -from the ceremonially slow in the first establishment story to the giddier pace ofWords, the fourth section and The Interview, number six. The settings and use of panels have an overtly filmic effect. It might look like a little house in Hiroshima but we are actually watching Ota in widescreen. And the strong narrative connections- we become quite hooked on finding out what is going to happen next- have all the compulsive through-line of a TV mini-series.
The performances are quite various – from caricature comic acting to low key cinematic rhythms. The nine members of the ensemble work apparently effortlessly through the evening. Normand Bissonette is excellent as Luke and Jeffrey, Normand Daneau, nicely restrained as Jeffrey Yamahita and Martina Bovet has a melancholy stillness as Ada. In the pivotal roles as Hanako and the young Jana Capek, the magician’s assistant in Terezin camp, Marie Eykel is memorably vivid. Seen here also in 1988 for The Dragon’s Trilogy, Richard Frichette and Marie Gignac provide satiric energy as the ambassador Lapointe and Patricia Hebert, actress turned anchorperson.
Seven Streams of the River Ota is a fine achievement. As these characters, many of them artists – musicians, singers, actors, dancers, translators- zigzag the globe, their connections and coincidences are both mythic and strangely credible. If the links from the blind translator to the Buddhist Jew to the Quebecois bhuto dancer seem, in description, fanciful or laboured- be assured that Robert Lepage and Ex Machina have created a current of experience and destiny that is as surprising, refreshing, unexpected and fluid as the River Ota itself.
“Reverberations” The Adelaide Review, No.174, March, 1998. p.38.