Off-Broadway Review: TOKIO CONFIDENTIAL

Perhaps The Most Beautiful Show I’ve Ever Seen….     

February 13, 2012

Tattooing is about personalizing the body, making it a true home and fit temple for the spirit that dwells inside it….Michelle Delio, Tattoo: The Exotic Art of Skin Decoration

I didn’t want to write a literal Noh play, but it was really the thematic elements that were very attractive to me….The whole notion of release of attachment is very Noh, and that’s what the whole play is about, really….Eric Schorr, TOKIO CONFIDENTAL lyricist/bookwriter

At the beginning of TOKIO CONFIDENTIAL, we see Isabella, dressed in a pure white kimono, emerge from behind a screen and slowly walk to center stage.  She, her dress, and all the stage around her, are beautiful beyond ample description. 

Her first words are “I am already dead”.

I can’t remember ever before referring to a play or musical as “exquisite”, but that’s the word that keeps coming to mind when I think of TOKIO CONFIDENTIAL, the musical currently in it’s last week at Atlantic Theater’s Stage 2. 

TOKIO CONFIDENTIAL just may be the most beautiful show I’ve ever seen. 

Bookwriter Eric Schorr, as he says above, set out to use Japan’s Noh Theatre form, which dates back to the 14^th Century, as the framework to tell the story of a beautiful American widow who comes to Japan in 1879, and either determines (or is seduced into determining) to turn herself into a piece of living art. 

The look, the movement, the music, the sounds, the feel of TOKIO CONFIDENTIAL are intended to blend seamlessly into a personification of both the Noh Theatre and the vast and gorgeous world of Japanese art.

No small task, that.

Much of the credit for the show’s achieving this difficult goal must go to Joanna McKeon’s masterful direction.  Of course, the primary task of every director is to bring the talents of her many collaborators into harmony with her vision of the playwright’s intention.  Ms. McKeon clearly understands down to a gnat’s eye what the show should be, and was wonderfully successful in making sure it would be that way. 

She was aided and abetted by the fine work of choreographer Tricia Brouk, who must have spent many a night building her movement vocabulary to include Noh Theatre, and much rehearsal time teaching the actors to move that way.  Noh movement is slow and carefully controlled at all times; thankfully, in the case of  TOKIO CONFIDENTIAL, the slowness isn’t extended to the point of the famous Noh actor who took an hour to cross from one side of the stage to the other. 

Ms. Brouk has all the actors moving throughout the show with the same stylization and pace, and maintains the beauty of that movement from first step to last. 

Following the Noh conventions did at times lead to confusion, as when the ghost of Isabella’s husband gets into a conversation with the visiting ex-President, Ulysses S. Grant.  Mystifying to the non-enlightened.

All of the designers did exemplary work, but I’ll especially point to the set designer, David M. Barber, projection designer Darrel Maloney, and costume designer Jacob A. Climber, each of whom added immeasurably to the beauty and the authentic sense of Japan and Noh. 

The audience enters to see a small stage floored by blocks of stone, a small course holding white stones across the front, and upstage two sliding fusuma screens with a simple but beautiful Japanese design projected onto them.  These screens will show many projections as the story progresses, each enriching and sometimes clarifying the action. 

A little more of the plot line: Fifteen years before, Isabella Archer (Jill Paice) lost her husband in the Civil War, and is now coming to Japan as a tribute to him, and to see more of the Japanese wood block art she’s come to love.  

As is traditional in Noh Theatre, her husband (Benjamin McHugh) often appears, and speaks, to Isabella.  

Upon her arrival, Isabella is taken under the wing of Ernest Osmond (Jeff Kready), an American who is in Japan’s Cultural Ministry.  He introduces Isabella to the world of tattoos, banned for the citizens on Japan, but permissible for foreigners. 

When she expresses interest in herself being tattooed, in effect turning herself into a piece of art,  Osmond takes her to meet Japan’s foremost tattoo artist, Horiyoshi (Mel Maghuyop), and the two enter into a pact: he will tattoo her back, which will require months of sessions, all of them greatly painful, and she will not stop until the tattoo is completed.

From there the story takes a number of turns, some rather predictable, and leads to more surprising twists in the second act that I can’t reveal without ruining the show for you.

From the cast, I’ll especially praise Mr. Maghuyop’s acting of the tattoo artist, who showed more depth than any of the others on stage.  TOKIO CONFIDENTIAL’s book isn’t one of its greatest strength, though the story is.  The actors aren’t given enough text to make their characters three-dimensional, and much of the time, they weren’t able to find any on their own.

Unfortunately, this was especially true for Ms. Paice, who seemed to lean overmuch on her exceptional beauty and the sweetness of her smile.  Since Isabella makes the key decisions in the story, she needed to show us layers she never was able to create.  As with the other characters, Isabella never shows much doubt, though the decisions she makes will hugely impact her life. 

She does have a chemistry with the tattoo artist – that is, she connects with him – something often lacking among the show’s other characters. 

TOKIO CONFIDENTIAL runs only until next Sunday, so if you’re drawn to see it, you’ll have to move quickly.  I don’t see a future for it as a commercial production, but I hope one of the not-for-profit theaters will put it onto their schedules for a longer run, which is deserves, though perhaps with some re-casting. 

Emerging from this musical is an understanding of the vast chasm between being truly a part of art, and standing apart in judgment of art.  It takes courage to be inside it, as it took courage to produce and create this show. 

Rating (5 stars possible):  (****)

The bottom line:  An exquisitely beautiful show with a surprising story well worth the trip downtown.

Who should go?  Anyone who loves art 

Do I recommend it?  Strongly

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