The Great Wave
Playwright: Francis Turnly Director: Indhu Rubasingham
If Francis Turnly had made up the plot of his “fresh and powerful” new play, you would be forgiven for calling it farfetched, said Sarah Crompton on What’s On Stage. The fact that the piece is based on real-life cases of ordinary Japanese people abducted into captivity by North Korean agents in the 1970s “gives added heft to a heartfelt and engrossing story”. Turnly, who describes himself as a Japanese Ulsterman, sets up his play as a thriller. It begins in 1979 with the mysterious disappearance of bolshy 17-yearold schoolgirl Hanako, who has stormed off down to the beach in her coastal Japanese town late one night. Has she been swept away by a great wave? Did her friend Tetsuo murder her?
Hanako’s mother and sister refuse to accept that she’s dead – and are right to do so, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. Part of this compelling play follows the devastating effects of Hanako’s disappearance, and her family’s unceasing search for the truth. Parallel scenes, meanwhile, show us her new life of Kafkaesque horror as a captive in Kim Il Sung’s North Korea – forced to teach Japanese language and culture to a young woman of her own age for reasons that become distressingly clear. Kirsty Rider as Hanako “ages very movingly” over the quarter century depicted, said Paul Taylor in The Independent, as her memories of her family back in Japan are distorted by the demands of the family foisted on her by the regime.
The play is far from perfect, said Sarah Hemming in the FT. There’s some “sketchy characterisation” and passages of rather wooden dialogue. Yet Indhu Rubasingham’s staging is fleet and consistently interesting, and there are fine performances – notably from Rosalind Chao as the girl’s mother and Vincent Lai as a traumatised North Korean man. “This is an urgent, riveting and resonant piece of theatre”. It’s also great to look at, said Ann Treneman in The Times. Tom Piper’s set, a revolving cube that pings us between a Japanese home, a diplomat’s office and various North Korean scenes, “is a sort of genius”.