It's not a good sign when, on the way home after seeing a play titled as this is, one is trying to make up one's own Japanese poems. Here's one such attempt: "When you write a play/Do not call it comedy/If it's simply not." At the top of the evening, an actor/musician/narrator/ stagehand steps forward to announce: Japanese Death Poem, a comedy by D.T. Arcieri. And we dutifully hold on to the expectation of comedy, with continued prompting by the house claques. But the leaden story and characters would be better served by letting the audience make its own decisions, expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised.
It's not that comedy can never be extracted from the tale of an unhappy, insecure poetry professor, Nathan; his wife, who apparently suffers mental illness and finally succumbs to a brain tumor; and his half-brother, Jonathan, whose ego is unencumbered by insecurity and who lusts after Nathan's wife. It's not that the piece lacks visual humor and the occasional quip. But don't force us into an interpretation. Why not let the script be "unpredictably capricious" like the Japanese poetry it quotes? Let us decide: How much is metaphoric, built from a few images, leaving us to interpolate meaning?
Ah, but Julie Hagerty makes up for any of the script's shortcomings. She is a superb example of how acting chops can elevate material. Drunken, sorrowful, flirtatious, nervous, demented; she creates accurate states that are somehow very specific to this character. The other roles are double-cast. On the evening reviewed, Gavin Glennon as Jonathan matched Hagerty in energy, also fully carving out his character's quirks. Richard Hoyt Miller was lovely in Nathan's introspective moments, but he revealed no strong sense of loss, desperation, need--something to shape Nathan. Scott Facher nimbly played all else, including referee, therapist, and priest, as well as musical instruments. Stage manager Henry Lide calls cues with split-second accuracy.
Stephen Tobolowsky directs with seeming passion for the characters, an eye for design, and a nifty layering of Japanese-theatre style on Western stagecraft. He is in the alternate cast as Nathan. In wishing to see his performance is where the audience's imagination is perhaps most stirred.
