On Stage
KANFER, STEFAN
On Stage NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES By Stefan Kanfer Of ALL the weapons deployed in the Pacific Theater during World War II, none was more scarifying or incomprehensible than Japanese kamikaze...
...Shelton makes a biddy into a threedimensional and sympathetic character...
...Little, if anything, has been lost in transit...
...she still regards him as the center of her universe...
...Vada has only one real flaw...
...Redmond is the classic Southern belle gone to seed and henna...
...Imai is not simply making a facile preachment against war, he is raging against contentment...
...Her comedy-drama amounts to a series of deft character sketches of aging women, each introduced by Apple...
...Yet they cling to their warrior ideal, urged on by their leader...
...The very word kamikaze is considered politically incorrect, except to members of the extreme Right wing...
...At first Aniki and Kinta find this single-mindedness unfathomable...
...She has no concept of how much the world has changed around her, what her friends really think, and how much her son needs to get away from her control...
...And Reed Birney makes much of his two parts: the good ole boy battling for his freedom, and the apparition of the father who left him too early...
...In The Exact Center of the Universe Mrs...
...They're losing out on their opportunities...
...why seek it out...
...The scandal is topic A for Vada's cronies, Enid (Sloane Shelton) and Marybell (Marge Redmond...
...In their solipsistic view Japanese history began in the 1970s...
...Winds of God took a long, circuitous route to the American Place Theater...
...To break the news as gently as possible, Apple enlists the aid of Mary Ann's twin sister, Mary Lou (also played by Thorne), who wastes no time...
...The visitors' mockery gives way to curiosity, and then to a strange envy for their brethren in uniform...
...In war all combat missions carry risks, but for these officers death was assured...
...But she realizes that she is no longer in the exact center of his universe, and by the end of Act One her composure begins to crack as she speaks to the shade of her long-departed husband...
...Both comedians come to consciousness in an Air Force barracks, populated by lieutenants they have never seen before...
...In one of the uncomfortable scenes, the commander orders a pilot to destroy the Christian Bible that belonged to his parents...
...This, Aniki and Kinta concede, is in sharp contrast to the lives they were leading in present-day Japan, with their meaningless pursuit of material goods and self-indulgences...
...I thought the people there would hear the word kamikaze and immediately hate the play," recalls Imai...
...He is also a tenacious man...
...As it develops, Aniki and Kinta have been propelled backward in time and given new identities...
...Thome cleverly impersonates two sisters with the same exterior but decidedly different personalities...
...Winds of God is an attempt to answer those questions, and in the process to probe the mind-set of Japan in two widely divergent eras, the 1940s and the 1990s...
...You may be an anthropologist," Vada protests, "but the kids are normal...
...Act Two takes place a decade later...
...In this intermissionless work, time travel, that old sci-fi standby, has been reinvigorated in ways that were never imagined in Hollywood...
...who needs to cut life short...
...The subtext, though, is crystalline...
...The elopement was Apple's idea...
...To say more would be to lessen the impact of Winds of God, and a powerful impact it is...
...The admirable cast speaks little English...
...He has been immeasurably aided by Michael Brown's resourceful stage design, Brian MacDevitt's delicate lighting, and Carrie Robbins' appropriate costumes...
...Then, a few months ago, a nationwide tour was arranged...
...they must be wiped out at any cost...
...It is the marriage that gives her pause...
...For all her furtiveness she might as well be admitting to a criminal past...
...In a dark moment each kamikaze admits to feelings of dread and dolor, just like every other fighting man...
...They can talk of nothing else as they meet in a fancified old tree house on Enid's property...
...There is more than enough death in wartime...
...Moreover, all are aware that Imperial Japan is doomed—only yesterday a terrible new kind of bomb fell on Hiroshima...
...For they can see that military brainwashing has not been totally effective...
...The pair never returns to the clubs...
...In the process, they repeat the lessonmade clear by their Japanese counterparts: No genre is ever exhausted if there is sufficient invention, dedication and perspiration...
...Offstage, the pair are about as deep as the wax on their shined shoes...
...The student anthropologist announces that hers is not a family of Episcopalian WASPS like the Powells...
...Following their overheated performance, Aniki revs up his motorcycle, Kinta clambers aboard and they go for a spin to cool off...
...But they greeted it with a standing ovation, and that encouraged him to take Winds of God across the Pacific...
...There is more bad news...
...No longer able to run Apple's life...
...Vada makes herpeace with the Catholicism (at least they're Christians and white), and by elevating the father's role to that of chef she accepts his blue collar status as well...
...At least these Winds of God have a purpose in life, however tragic...
...They have been thoroughly trained until only one goal remains: protecting their country by making the supreme sacrifice...
...Mary Ann ("The private parts are God's mistake"), and finally with Apple himself ("I don't interfere," she says in her own defense, "I intervene...
...Without mercy they tease and tempt their suicidal colleagues...
...But they, too, have grown weary of Vada's superior airs and complaining tone...
...Winds of God has an exotic locale, but the message is universal...
...It is a race in which none of the participants truly want to reach the finishing line...
...Japanese youth, he feels, are "too comfortable, too complacent...
...The Japanese tend to ignore their military past these days...
...Toshiyuki Tashiro's set is appropriately foreboding, and Tadanori Hirata's sound design has done in the theater what Saving Private Ryan did in cinema—made the horror of battle immediate and convincing...
...She announces her displeasure when Mary Lou comes home with photographs of undraped African tribesfolk and hands them to her niece and nephew...
...Why did they volunteer to end their lives in a sea of flame...
...The twins' mother drives a school bus and their father is a cook in the local hotel...
...Imai is a triple threat: an accomplished tragicomic actor, playwright and director...
...Butbefore she can do anything about it, she receives a phone call...
...their survival rate was like the name of their planes: zero...
...It plays uncomfortably well right here in the booming and overindulged U.S.A...
...The three women are too close to bicker all the time, but by the afternoon's end their relationship is permanently altered...
...Hedonism is not in their lexicon...
...Although the ex-comedians have returned to the summer of 1945, they refuse to discard the attitudes of the '90s...
...The old lady seeks aid and comfort from her cronies...
...These were fliers (in their own tongue, "Winds of God") who had volunteered to aim their planes at Allied vessels in the hope of blowing up the ships as well as themselves...
...She is forever burbling about her knowledge of current events, her wardrobe, her close friends, her splendid house and her bright, ambitious son, Appleton "Apple" Powell (Reed Birney...
...This leads to a skirmish with her daughter-in-law...
...Aniki (Imai) spends the bulk of his time putting down the smaller clown, Kinta (Risu Matsumoto), berating him with insults, belaboring him with cuffs and slaps, all the while telling witless stories and Viagra jokes...
...In the leading role Sternhagen is, as always, superb, mixing intelligence, inflexibility and charm...
...John Tillinger has directed with agility and humor, expanding the jewel box stage of the Century Theater...
...they have no use for a portrait of complex, doubting figures...
...While she is palavering with Mary Lou, Apple and his beloved run off to get married...
...They are ignorant about everything including pop culture, uncertain as to whether the Beatles broke up just before World War II or immediately afterward...
...His taller friend takes a deep breath and boards his own flying machine...
...As for Enid a retired schoolteacher, she is childless and has no patience at all with a woman who is desecrating the gift of grandchildren...
...By that time word of mouth had gotten around...
...She, too, is of Italian descent...
...they are Roman Catholics of Italian descent...
...But playwright Joan Vail Thome is after something else entirely...
...And those militants regard the suicide bomber as a kind of superman...
...So the play struggled for 10 years to find an audience...
...Vada Love Powell (Frances Sternhagen) is a widow of the modern South...
...One by one the other pilots go off on their fatal assignments...
...Ultimately the smaller comedian/flier comes to accept his role as a sacrificial soldier, and climbs into his plane...
...The annoyed Marybell angrily confesses that she is not the WASP she has pretended to be all these years...
...Masayuki Imai's extraordinary play begins in modern-day Tokyo, where two loopy, twentysomething stand-up comedians are performing a number...
...For its first few minutes The Exact Center of the Universe seems to be yet another spinoff of the standard Tennessee Williams drama: a strong, driven mother and a sensitive son, undone by her suffocating love...
...the players have learned their lines by rote, and occasionally I had to strain to make out an accented phrase...
...Both crash, but for one of them that is not the end of the story...
...anything to avoid a confrontation with Mama...
...It is the book of a people who would drop an atomic weapon on civilians, he thunders...
...On Stage NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES By Stefan Kanfer Of ALL the weapons deployed in the Pacific Theater during World War II, none was more scarifying or incomprehensible than Japanese kamikaze pilots...
...They are now Lieutenants Kishida and Fukumoto, kamikaze pilots, surrounded by fellow officers (Masanobu Yada, Hiroshi Shimizu, Eijiro Ozaki) and an autocratic squadron commander (Atsushi Yoshida...
...Meals remain to be eaten, wines to be drunk, jokes to be told, girls to be bedded...
...Vada focuses on the lives of his children...
...Working at fever pitch they breathe new life into the Old South...
...Their routine is vaguely reminiscent of Abbott and Costello on an off day...
...Its beginnings were not propitious...
...Performances were packed, even in Hiroshima...
...Back home, Vada is obliged to confront her shortcomings and to attempt a change before she loses her whole family to petty squabbles, and they lose her to senescence...
...Standing at stage left, he reminisces about me epochal day he decided to marry Mary Ann (Tracy Thome), a girl his mother had yet to meet...
...En route to nowhere, the biker loses control of his vehicle and collides headon with a truck...
...Apple's mother keeps a stiff upper class...
...The supporting players keep pace...
...But their fellow fliers refuse to succumb to these blandishments...
...Neither has the ability to see beyond the next club date...
...What set them apart from their fellow servicemen who chose to stay alive, soldiering on to the end...
Vol. 82 • September 1999 • No. 11
