Reverse World by Gumbo Japanese Theatre

Melbourne Fringe Festival
at North Melbourne Town Hall until October 3, 1999

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Think of the style of Monkey, the dubbed Japanese television series about the adventures of the Monkey King, and transpose it to the stage. You have something resembling Reverse World.

Angels, humans, martial arts combat, broad characters, loud costumes, noisy music and songs all combine to make up the work of Gumbo, the youthful Japanese theatre company which is doing the rounds of the western world's fringe festivals: Edinburgh, New York and now Melbourne.

Reverse world is their current show that is 75 minutes of grotesque physical comedy that incorporates classical and contemporary Japanese theatre styles. The five actors (Kayo Tamura, Kenichi Mabuchi, Kikuko Imai, Hiroyo Koyama, Noriko Ikemoto) are extremely physical and acrobatic.

They create choreography that owes a great deal to martial arts combat and they work directly to the audience with broad open clown-like faces. The five sing, chant and howl and Japanese percussion accompanies the whole piece, punctuating the action and providing a dramatic score.

In the story, the world of the angels collides with the human world when an angle falls in love with a human girl. It is a classic boy meets girl story. It is uncannily similar to the narrative of Parallax Island that is the show that precedes it in the same space on hour earlier.

The story satirises romantic love. God's angels control the humans who have no free will. the angels live an easy, joyful existence and attempt to eliminate all pain from the world of humans. The human girl objects to this trickery. She thinks we should face our fates.

This show is skilful, exciting to watch and often hilarious, both intentionally and unintentionally. The latter is due to the hilarity arising out of accidents with accent. It seems unnecessary for the group to work in English when they are not fluent. The piece relies heavily on physical storytelling so why not do it in Japanese? It is exhausting to listen to it in English.

by Kate Herbert