Demons of loss and loneliness haunt exile’s spiritual journey
Theatre Flower, Bird, Wind, Moon Oran Mor, Glasgow Mary Brennan **** OUR Man (Billy Mack) has, on an impulse, headed off to Japan.
Signed up for a course on Noh theatre – well, he’s always loved the plays, so why not learn how to perform in them?
His middle-aged muscles are soon protesting “why not”, with Our Man a truly clutzy novice in just one of the comic episodes that writer and director Paddy Cunneen deploys, like a relaxing agent, during the early stages of a play that, in the end, isn’t funny or superficial at all.
As Our Man assimilates into a way of life that is entirely foreign – not just in language, but culture, customs and religion – he releases his reason for distancing himself from work and home.
We sort of know already: Our Man’s self-imposed challenges and chipper way of narrating his own failures are all a defence against grief, and Mack has the nuanced talent to let this truth peep through.
Our Man has, however, chosen the wrong place, and the wrong art form, to escape from matters of death, and life
he very texts he studies resonate with the demons of loss and loneliness. The woman who becomes his companion, Josei (Tomoko Komura), lived through the 2011 tsunami – her loss is softly spoken to us in a monologue where despair is touchingly negated by hope.
If Mack is a wonderfully subtle chameleon – handling the humour, the emotional pain, as well as the technical language of Noh with persuasive ease – then Komura is his match, as she shape-shifts through the mixture of characters that inform his much-needed spiritual journey.
By the time Our Man is dancing as Emperor of the Moon, he has acquired a profound and poetic sense of what existence means – and our hearts leap for him.
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