Another version of “Parasite”: the Japanese director staged a black comedy based on the play by Kobo Abe

“Friends” come to your home with good intentions – the ending is shocking

The premiere of the play “Friends” on the Small Stage of the Theater of Nations aroused great interest, since the visit of a foreign director to Russia is now a rarity. Motoi Miura turned to the play of Kobo Abe, who was popular not only in Japan, but once also in the USSR, putting the bright form at the forefront.

Motoi Miura heads the Chiten Theater in Kyoto. He staged Chekhov’s plays in Japan: “The Seagull”, “The Cherry Orchard”, “Uncle Vanya”, “Three Sisters”. Miuro is friends with the director of the Oscar-winning film Take the Wheel of My Car, Ryusuke Homaguchi, and helped lead actor Hidetoshi Nishijima in his work as the director of Uncle Vanya in the Japanese theater.

In 2011, Miura and his theater came on tour to Moscow and presented the performances “The Cherry Orchard” and “Uncle Vanya” at the Meyerhold Center. In 2016, his “The Seagull” from Kyoto was seen on the stage of the Bolshoi Drama Theater. G. Tovstonogov, and in 2019, “Uncle Vanya”. In May last year he staged “Crime and Punishment” at the BDT. Dostoevsky and Chekhov have been his favorite writers since his youth. Everything happens in a nightmare, which became a punishment for Raskolnikov. A host of characters settled in his head, screaming something like seagulls, endings endlessly repeated. About the same thing happens to the hero in Friends, but this is not a dream.

In Moscow, Miura wanted to stage Russian classics, but the artistic director of the Theater of Nations, Yevgeny Mironov, suggested thinking about Japanese drama. Kobo Abe was a popular writer back in the USSR. His novel “The Woman in the Sands” was impossible to buy. Oddly enough, his books were sold in rural stores, where the Soviet intelligentsia purchased them.

“Friends” is, according to the director, a black comedy. A family appears in the rented apartment of a quite successful young man: parents, their five children and a grandmother – in essence, nice people with good intentions, trying to save a person from loneliness. They settle in his house, interfere with his personal life, and control his income and freedom. Another invasion of barbarians, which is full of modern world cinema. These people resemble anime characters; they pronounce phrases in a sing-song voice, repeating their endings. It seems that nothing like this can happen, but a person’s life is going downhill. As the leading actor Sergei Epishev will say, this is a play about the desire to impose one’s idea of ​​what is good for another, not just to offer help, but to impose it.

Still, the phenomenon of “Parasite” by Bong Joon Ho is not accidental. In 2020, this South Korean film received a collection of Oscars, and before that the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It affected millions of people around the world, and some people couldn’t understand it. The owner of the house, Mr. Park, was played by Lee Sung Kyun. A modest family gets a job in his hero’s house, which will destroy him. In December 2023, the 48-year-old actor was found dead in central Seoul. He left a suicide note. Before this, Lee Sun Gyun was interrogated three times, and what he was suspected of was not confirmed. All drug tests came back negative. The actor said that he was forced to take unknown drugs. In life, the situation of “Parasite” was partially repeated. The film, in a grotesque form, warned of an invasion of barbarians who, perhaps, had not yet entered your home, but were already on the way. It was important for Motoi Miura to talk about the powerlessness of a person to whom uninvited “friends” entered, deprived him of his own identity, and killed his faith in himself.

Unlike the BDT performance, where a large Japanese team worked, a Russian group gathered at the Theater of Nations. Only the composer was from Japan – Keisuke Kuwata. Scenographer and costume designer Olga Shaishmelashvili built a structure that resembled a Mausoleum podium and at the same time a labyrinth, from which stick out the heads of almost cartoon characters – those very parasites that penetrate into all the cracks of someone else’s house. The costumes are a mixture of different eras, including the Middle Ages. The house resembles a slanted cylinder, unsuitable for life; you can fall from it like from a cliff.

150 artists participated in the casting. The director chose 13. Among them are Sergei Epishev and Oleg Savtsov, who simultaneously play the owner of the apartment (the sad outcome of the first is worse, since it is the death of a giant), Alla Kazakova, Eva Milgram, Maria Lapshina, Alexandra Revenko. Then Miura will tell you what struck him about Russian actors. They like to talk a lot, so I had to say, “Stop.” He did not give any will.

Above all, for Miura, bright form, rhythm, sound, intonation. From the endless clapping of the characters, replacing their speech and emotions, you soon begin to go crazy. The actors, who rehearsed for nine hours every day, then could not get rid of broken pronunciation and clapping, brought all this to their loved ones. This is how the “parasites” entered their house. The effect is unique in its kind, giving you the opportunity to feel the darkness of what is happening to the hero for yourself, but this is already a ruthless overkill, an experiment on the audience.