Play brings 'Japan's Shakespeare' to McCarter

Weaving through the snaking line for Triangle's production on a rainy Friday night, I found myself ducking into the Berlind Theatre. In the same building as the slapstick bedlam, "Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards" drew a more pensive and quiet audience into a mystical Japanese world. The play was written by Peter Oswald, longtime playwright-in-residence at Shakespeare's Globe in London and one of the few living practitioners of verse drama in the English-speaking world. This scholar has transformed the antiquated play by Japan's greatest playwright and Shakespeare equivalent, Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The play was originally written in narrative for kabuki and bunraku puppets. Chikamatsu had experienced life as a samurai, courtier, actor and merchant before dedicating his career to literature and creating 160 works.

"Fair Ladies" was written in 1714, and in this version, involves actors whose names are more difficult to pronounce than that of the playwright. Portrayed by 13 Princeton students and directed by Erica Schmidt, this play exceeds the level of sophistication, and most likely the budget, of other University productions. Schmidt is best known for the wildly disparate plays she has directed: "As You Like It" for the New York Shakespeare Festival and off-Broadway "Debbie Does Dallas," an X-rated musical spoof. She is accompanied behind the scenes by a lengthy list of professionals, many of whom are to be applauded for their poetic sensibilities and imaginations.

"Fair Ladies" is an aesthetically gorgeous production. The set, designed by Mimi Lien, consists of two gold-plated platforms, an expansive background, a calm reflecting pool and a floor-to-ceiling gauze curtain that playfully reflects the ripples of water. The stage is blanketed by periodic showers of falling leaves and snow and scenes are punctuated by colorful rice-paper umbrellas. In several scenes, characters fly, illuminating the supernatural and spiritual realm separate from the mundane drama below. Japanese connection with nature is beautifully represented through the artistry of this set.

The play follows suit with Chikamatsu's favorite themes: love and suicide. Two maids in the court of Empress Kenrei Mon-In, Ronit Rubenstein '05, fall in love with two samurai from another court. The jealous Lord Morotaka, Arthur Burkle '07, condemns the four central characters for consummating their love and sentences each to a violent execution.

The samurai backdrop requires all male characters to wear long wooden poles that poke menacingly from their linens. With each dramatic event that occurs or shocking line that is delivered, everyone backstage simultaneously slaps their wooden sticks together, jolting the audience with a deafening beat. The movements of the actors are all melodic and choreographed, and the dialogue is delivered in iambic pentameter. The rhythmic movements and verse coupled with the fairytale set make "Fair Ladies" both powerful and magical.

Theatre-goers with short attention spans be warned. This play requires extreme vigilance and effort to decode verse and understand confusing Japanese names. Beyond the brilliant aesthetics, the play is a maze of lust, murder, comedy, great adventure and friendship that rewards the active viewer. There are scenes of love making, brutal journeys in the cold, combat and torture.

It is a moving play for the theatrically imaginative, a spiritual infusion of "Twelfth Night," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Snow White." The meditative set, smooth performance and authentic costumes make it easy to fall passively into the Japanese Renaissance. "Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards" is a production of the Program in Theatre & Dance and will be performed Nov. 18-20 at 8 p.m. in the Berlind Theatre.