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conceived and directed by David Danzon

CORPUS & KIO, The Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen Street West, Toronto

September 25-29, 2024

“Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

CORPUS, the unfailingly inventive theatre and dance company, has brought Toronto the North American premiere of its latest creation, Mukashi, Mukashi. The hour-long work, a co-production with KIO of Osaka, Japan, is a celebration of the fairy-tale. The title (むかしむかし in hiragana) is Japanese for “Once upon a time”, the traditional beginning for fairy-tales. The show is a delight from start to finish. Although meant for both adults and children, it is adults who will best be able to just how imaginative the show is. Anyone who enjoyed the escape to fantasy that CORPUS’s Divine Interventions provided, will know what elation a Corpus creation can inspire.

The show is conceived and directed by CORPUS Artistic Director David Danzon but performed by the KIO ensemble, including Kohey Nakadachi, the Artistic Director of that company which has an obvious affinity with the aesthetics of CORPUS. We know we are in CORPUS territory from the very beginning. Plunged into darkness we hear a chorus of growling emanating from the stage. A nice, round spotlight with sharp edges plays up the stage floor to the feet of the group and then up their bodies at last revealing the four-person KIO ensemble growling with their hands shaped into claws. In a typical bit of CORPUS theatre humour, the spotlight, to our surprise, continues to move upwards and off the “wolves” until it comes to rest above the group. With the spotlight now looking like the moon, the “wolves” respond by changing their growls into howls.

After a blackout, the lights come up to find the four KIO members equally spaced on the stage floor busy at folding origami in a clean square of light. As if embarrassed by our gaze, each member in sequence turns their back to the audience only to reveal a wolf’s tail attached to the back of their pants. Once they complete their folding each turns around to show they have made a crane and then affix the paper crane to their hair. Thus, we are introduced to the two animals that will be focus of the show – the wolf and the crane, the first to represent Western stories, the second to represent Eastern. As it happens, the entire show is performed primarily in Japanese with English surtitles above the stage to house right. French surtitles are above the stage to house left.

The first half of the show focusses on the wolf and presents four variations on the theme of Little Red Riding Hood. Though played in Japanese, the story is thought of as a European fairy-tale best-known in the versions by Charles Perrault (1697) and the Brothers Grimm (1812), even though there are analogues to the story in Asia. Each variation is conceived in a different style. The first is done as a children’s play, the second as a bunraku drama, the third as stage version of a Looney Tunes cartoon and the fourth as a confrontational talk in the mode of The Jerry Springer Show.

I enjoyed the first two variations most. Yann Becker’s set consists of three door-sized paper screens on small rolling platforms. One side is painted with a Japanese-style scene of a forest with the reverse side blank. In the first variation, one of the screens is separated from the other two, turned around and placed to the side. On this one of the performers as Grandma paints the kanji 火 for “fire” and then proceeds to warm her hands in front of it. Like the spotlight becoming the moon, it’s a wonderfully theatrical transformation. The two remaining screens represent the sliding doors to Grandma’s house. The Big Bad Wolf knocks there are Grandma and he have a heatd discussion whether she should allow him in because he is so cold.

The second variation was my favourite of the whole show. Here two performers act as bunraku puppets of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, each manipulated by puppeteer or kuroku clad in black to symbolize invisibility. In real bunraku, each puppet requires three kuroku to manipulate it, but here the idea is readily understood. What is so amazing about this scene is how the performers playing the puppets so well simulate bunraku puppets in their gestures and movement across the stage. People generally are impressed with how “lifelike” bunraku puppets are. Here, paradoxically, the “puppets” are so lifelike because the living actors playing them are so puppetlike.

After the four Red Riding Hood variations that end in a group dance number, the show makes a transition to the other central animal of the fairy-tales. We hear of a dispute between a Wolf and a Crane, the Wolf claiming that the crane is polluting his water. The Wolf, who believes that “might is always right”, solves the problem by eating the Crane.

The talk show variation I found the least effective and too long in the context of the other variations. After seeing the ensemble show itself so adept at mime and synchronized group movement and so skilled at evoking emotion from such simple gestures, a variation grounded in speaking tended to jar with the surrounding scenes.

The remainder of the show is taken up with the admonitory Japanese folktale called “The Crane Wife” (鶴の恩返し). In this story a crane is caught is a fisherman’s net and various men try to free it. One succeeds. Later that night a mysterious woman dressed all in white visits the man and asks to stay overnight. While the man sleeps, she weaves the most beautiful fabric anyone has ever seen. The man is amazed by it and takes it to the market where he sells it for a price that will make him well off forever. Nevertheless, to meet the demand for more such fabric he asks the Woman, whom he has now married, to weave more fabric. She says she will under one condition – that he never watch her while she works at night. I won’t say any more, but we all know what happens in fairy-tales that feature the motif known as “The One Forbidden Thing”.

Mukashi, Mukashi may be a celebration of fairy-tales but on stage it is clearly a celebration of theatre. In the theatre anything can become anything else. A Chinese character for “fire” becomes a fire. People with wolves’ tails are wolves. People with origami cranes in their hair become cranes. We can see four different version of the same story. We can see an origami crane re-enter the theatre space as a spirit with a human appearance. The theatre is a place for transformation.

The KOI performers work as an ensemble with every movement minutely choreographed. Kohey Nakadachi takes several principal roles and is very funny as the Wolf in the first Red Riding Hood variation and as the sleazy Host in the talk show variation. Takako Segawa excels in the humour of the doubtful Grandma in the first Red Riding Hood variation. Sakura Korin is amazing as the bunraku puppet of Red Riding Hood. And Kaitlin Torrance dances the elegant solo for the Crane choreographed by Mathew O’Connor with the utmost grace.

If you want to experience the joy of pure theatre, Mukashi, Mukashi is a show you must see. You will exit smiling with the pleasure of seeing familiar things in new ways.

Christopher Hoile

Photo: The ensemble presenting Little Red Riding Hood in bunraku style; Kohey Nakadachi as Wolf; Kaitlin Toorance as Crane. @ 2024 Yoshikaze Inoue.

For tickets visit: theatrecentre.org.