For a show that touches on sadomasochism, self-mutilation and disfigurement, “Shun-kin” is awfully decorous. Director Simon McBurney’s Complicite theater production is as gorgeous and delicate as a Japanese porcelain doll — and, sadly, just about as lifeless.
Based on a 1933 short story and essay by Japanese writer Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, this Lincoln Center Festival offering concerns the twisted relationship between Shun-kin, a blind musician, and her devoted servant Sasuke.
So devoted is Sasuke that he subjects himself to Shun-kin’s endless abuse, both verbal and physical. The pair become lovers and she bears him several children, although she refuses to acknowledge his paternity. He nonetheless remains faithful to her, going so far as to commit a horrific act of self-destruction in a misguided gesture of empathy.
The imaginatively staged production features both live performers (from Tokyo’s Setagaya Public Theatre) and puppetry. Tanizaki’s essay “In Praise of Shadows” has clearly informed its visual aesthetic: The action is dimly lit, with tiny portions of the large stage illuminated amid pits of darkness. The visual beauty is enhanced by striking projections and shadow puppetry, while a musician seated on the side of the stage plays the shamisen, the stringed instrument that is Shun-kin’s specialty.
Shun-kin herself is played by a series of puppets of varying sizes representing her at different ages, until she’s eventually portrayed by an actress (Eri Fukatsu) who performs as if she, too, were a marionette.
The 19th-century-set tale is quietly haunting and punctuated here and there with mordant humor, such as when Shun-kin is seen physically humiliating her hapless lover.
“Sexual relations are infinite in their variety,” an observer dryly intones.
But it all proceeds at a glacial pace, more like a series of narrated visual tableaux than living theater. And the awkward framing device — involving a woman who becomes inspired to reappraise her relationship with her lover while narrating the story at a modern-day recording studio — is jarring in its comic relief.
Exquisitely staged and performed, “Shun-kin” seems lost in the vast confines of the Rose Theater. Worse, the English subtitles are projected so high above the stage, it’s hard to fully appreciate the show’s visual splendors.