If you have recently found yourself amazed at the displays of emotion over the death of the inscrutable North Korean despot Kim Jong-il; if you still have trouble fathoming the Cold War’s nuclear arms build-up, or our current showdowns with Iran over its alleged nuclear program; in short, if you have trouble comprehending power’s tendency to slide toward violence, the addictive nature of stand-offs and p---ing matches, and the loyalty—even love—that totalitarian regimes sometimes inspire, you might want to see The Bee.
This elegy on the roots and nature of human violence is a co-production of the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, the SoHo Theatre, London, and Noda-Map, and is being performed at the Japan Society as part of The Public’s Under the Radar Festival. Co-written (with Colin Teevan) and directed by Hideki Noda, who also performs, The Bee features a stellar four-person cast. The standout is Kathryn Hunter, a 1990 Olivier award-winner, in an often mesmerizing performance in the lead role, as a Japanese businessman with a latent propensity for inflicting terror. The Bee represents one of the most penetrating and visceral depictions of violence I’ve ever seen on stage (another that comes to mind is director Robert Woodruff’s 2001 production of Saved, by Edward Bond, a play that was revived again in London this past fall). The Bee is no less horrifying for favoring the expressionistic over the naturalistically graphic. Not a drop of fake blood is spilled. You will also remark how wholly unnecessary it is to making the real blood of the audience run cold.
Ido (Hunter) is a Japanese salaryman in 1974 who arrives home on the day of his son’s 6th birthday to find that an escaped convict, Ogoro (Glyn Pritchard), is holed up inside with a gun and has taken Ido’s wife and child hostage. Ogoro is demanding to see his own wife and son, who happens to have been born on the same day and year as Ido’s little boy (the two men have even bought their children the same techie gift, a calculator). When the police seem to be more concerned with slurping their noodles than bringing the case to a quick resolution, Ido insists on meeting Ogoro’s wife (Noda) for himself. One might easily assume, as I did, that Ido intends to plead with the wife on behalf of his own family, and convince her to meet with her husband and resolve the hostage crisis, and indeed that’s how he begins. But quickly, in a move that may surprise even himself, Ido evens the playing field, taking Ogoro’s wife and son captive in their home.
Ido’s utter loss of control—of the welfare of his wife and son, his home, his life—spurs him to take control instead of Ogoro’s family. The increasingly horrifying stand-off between the two men that results seems intended as an allegory about the self-perpetuating nature of dominance. The only way to maintain power, the play says, is to keep dominating, even when the resulting violence turns back on the perpetrator, as it inevitably does. The first time Ido harms Ogoro’s little boy, we are shocked, and I was still shocked the second, the third, the fourth times. Even when Ido knows each wound he inflicts is being repeated by Ogoro on Ido’s own child—that hurting Ogoro’s child amounts to hurting his own boy, by his own hand—he does not relent.
The violent acts are not only repeated but ritualized, which is what turns this from a story about one man into a story about humans. Each instance of brutality is followed by a pantomime of daily life— shaving, eating dinner, having sex—which by this time Ogoro’s wife initiates (to what point, resistance?). This is terror as routine. And in keeping with this, Ogoro’s wife and child come to expect their punishments, offering themselves up for Ido’s blade. It’s a horrifying testament to what people can become used to, as well as victims’ own attempts to find some level of control; at least they can anticipate—and choose to accept—their fates. There is even a kind of affection—a sense of familiarity and hence, the familial—in the interactions between these three—that is, until Ido has no one left to hurt but himself.
Hunter’s Ido convincingly transforms from upstanding citizen to indurate torturer, thanks in part to a bravura physical performance. In her movements, including what I’ll call ballet sections that are transfixing, she channels the rage and adrenaline of a killer’s high. “This is the real me,” Ido says, matter-of-factly.
The play’s formalism is also reflected in the rhyming couplets that find their way into much of the dialogue. “Because now you have a gun, please, please, release my son,” Ogoro begs Ido when then confront each other via phone. The staging hums with energy throughout most of the play. In the opening scene, Ido, reporters, and police bounce around almost as if in a boxing ring, constrained by giant strings of rubber bands that criss-cross the stage and evoke crime scene tape and the macabre circus-like atmosphere that pervades the aftermath of a crisis. Miriam Buether’s costumes and liquid-red set and Paul Arditti’s sound design help pull us into the nightmarish world of the story.
One of the production’s few flaws is that so arresting is the central drama between Ido, Ogoro, and Ogoro’s wife and son (also played by Pritchard in an impressive bit of staging and hat-switching), everything else—police and reporters, mostly—feels a bit superfluous, and these sections can drag. Clive Mendus, who rounds out the four-person cast, is increasingly beaten-down as the detective Dodoyama. Noda as Ogoro’s wife and Pritchard as Ogoro and son give seamless, affecting performances. Their fear and pain become ours as well.
I also gradually began to ask, how much more of this are they going to make us watch? But that was of course the point; my continued discomfort was testament to the piece’s success. In front of me was a family with two children—including a boy not much older than the one we see maimed on stage. I wondered what their post-performance conversation would be like. “The Bee”—which gets its title from a stinging nuisance beyond our control, a reminder that complete domination over one’s world is always an illusion—is not a pleasant evening at the theater, for children or anyone else. But works like this remind us of theater’s power to help us understand in our guts what all the news coverage in the world can’t adequately convey. Be brave. See The Bee. Bring your kids.
THE BEE
Co-written & Directed by Hideki Noda (Japan)
Presented by Japan Society as part of The Public's Under The Radar Festival
Through 1/15
$25 Tickets: japansociety.org or 212-715-1258
Japan Society 333 East 47th Street
for more info: http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=461
Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com
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