Good Bye
The Coronet Theatre, London

LOOSELY based on an uncompleted 1948 work by renowned Japanese novelist Osamu Dazai, the story concerns a disillusioned man meeting up with friends and former lovers to say goodbye and plan his own death. As the evening descends into drunkenness, the question of what it is to be Japanese predominates. For a crushed, post-war society with a reliance on traditional culture and values, the forces of globalisation are a brutal severance from the past and a society that clearly shaped personal identity.

Dazai never completed the novel, committing suicide alongside his latest lover, but the play is more than a reworking of the existing 39 pages. Elements from his classic work of fiction No Longer Human, whose semi-autobiographical narrator deals with themes of suicide, social alienation and depression, are also present in what becomes a paean to the author and his work.

One of Japan’s leading experimental theatre companies Chiten, backed by the rock band Kukangendai, create an immersive experience that is more like being in a throbbing bar than a typical theatre performance with snippets of surtitled conversation being snatched and isolated from a barrage of sound.

The seven actors, representative of different character types and dressed in modern and traditional costume, are positioned separately along a bar running the full width of the stage. A series of integrated tableaux, repetitive stylised movements and individual performances interlink, while the voices, echoing the same phrases and their own intoxicated outlooks on life, become percussive accompaniments to the band.

As such, the 75-minute performance is as much a gig and poetry slam as a play. Suicidal thoughts, religious convictions, political leanings and relationships are explored with discordant phrases to the accompaniment of an insistent beat. It is not without moments of humour but the intensity, pace and almost unremitting nature of the piece leave no time for reflexion.

Directed by Motoi Miura with clockwork precision, the cast work like a well-oiled machine to portray the intensity of Dazai’s work but its unremitting nature does not always do justice to the sensitivity of the author’s novels.

Runs until March 9, box office: thecoronettheatre.com