Without getting into the nitty-gritty history of Noh theater in Japan, the way it’s been practiced over the last few centuries—excruciatingly subtle, barely vocalized, pared down to a series of exaggerated gestures—has made classic Noh plays a tough sell for Western audiences.
Then: Yukio Mishima. Mishima wrote scores of novels, stories, essays, and plays, including many modern adaptations of Noh plays. Mishima’s Noh plays reflected his complicated beliefs, blending Western modernity and traditional Japanese values.
In the hands of Jerry Mouawad and the crew at Imago, the pastiche inherent in Mishima’s The Lady Aoi is blown up even further. The classic play is the story of Aoi (Gwendolyn Duffy), a woman haunted by an evil spirit. Mishima’s version takes place in a 1950s psychiatric institution, where Aoi is watched over by a nervy nurse (Emily Welch) and her husband Hikaru (Matt DiBiasio), and haunted by the “living ghost” of an ex-lover of Hikaru’s, Lady Rokujo (Jeannie Rogers).
