London premiere Tokaido Road
%17-%02-%2015, %RTokaido Road receives its London premiere on Wednesday February 25th; 5.30 pm at the Milton Court Theatre, Barbican, London.
'Tokaido Road: a Journey after Hiroshige' was commissioned by Okeanos.
'Inspired by the Japanese
artist Hiroshige’s woodblock print series 53 Stations of the Tokaido, LeFanu
and her librettist Nancy Gaffield have created an existential journey in
speech, song, mime and dance with Hiroshige’s pictures projected. What with
unhappy love, treacherous rivers and wintry scenes, it’s rather like an
oriental Winterreise. We’re left with Hiroshige in old age, singing his own
epitaph, and the dying murmurs of the sho (Japanese mouth organ) and
flickerings of the plucked koto.
The strongest element in
Tokaido Road is LeFanu’s sensitive use of the combined western and Japanese
sound palette of the Okeanos ensemble, which combines the likes of sho and koto
with oboe, clarinet, viola and cello.
The piece is well paced and
meticulously thought through, with spare instrumental lines exquisitely woven
with the voices and deftly conducted by Dominic Wheeler. The director Caroline
Clegg and choreographer Nando Messias guide the body language of the old
Hiroshige (baritone Jeremy Huw Williams, speaking) and the young, travelling
Hiroshige (Williams, singing), the two lovers Kikuyo (Raphaela Papadakis) and
Mariko (Caryl Hughes), and Tomoko Komura’s superb mime artistry. Every word is
audible, every movement is eloquent and Kimie Nakano’s design remains long in
the mind’s eye.'
The Times July 8th 2014. ****