Miki Nakatani plays Saiko, mistress to the owner of the title weapon in Serge Lamothe’s play The Hunting Gun. Photograph by Pasha Antonov. (Banner photo by Stephanie Berger.)
The Hunting Gun, an avant-garde piece of theater by Serge Lamothe, is a remarkably mesmerizing work, but it also presents challenges to a viewer: only one of its two performers speaks, and then it’s entirely in Japanese (there are surtitles in English). Adapted from a novel of the same name by Yasushi Inoue, the work begins with a prologue. An author, heard over a loudspeaker, recites a poem called Hunting Gun—written about a man with “a double-barreled Churchill.” The author subsequently received a letter from Josuke Misugi, who claims to be the man who inspired the poem. Out of the blue, he tells the author, he is sending him three letters in the hopes that he (or perhaps just someone, anyone) will understand his life.
Mikhail Baryshnikov plays Josuke Misugi, a nonspeaking part, in The Hunting Gun. Photograph by Pasha Antonov.
The letters are from three different women, and each of the monologues is delivered by Miki Nakatani as the letter writer. François Séguin provides three different sets as each woman recites a letter written to a man behind a scrim upstage—Misugi, the hunter of the title. The sets work terrifically in tandem with the shadowy lighting of David Finn and the Asian-inflected music of Alexander MacSween, drawing heavily on plinking, droning and reverb, with occasional snatches of melody breaking up the subtle disharmonies.
The women whom Nakatani portrays are Shoko, Misugi’s daughter; Midori, Misugi’s wife; and Saiko, Misugi’s longtime mistress, and, under the direction of François Girard, each has a distinctive personality. The first letter one hears is from Shoko, who reneged on a promise to burn her mother Saiko’s diary, and discovered the affair between her mother and Misugi. “I know that there is a love that no one blesses and that no one should bless,” the puritanical Shoko writes. “Your wife Midori doesn’t know about it. I don’t know about it. Not one of our relatives knows about it. And they shouldn’t.”
During the monologue, Shoko crisscrosses the playing area slowly, periodically squatting to light a stick of incense (even the smell enhances the mystery), underlining her traditional thinking. Shoko (who thought her parents were divorced and never met her father) feels deeply upset not only because of Misugi’s infidelity, but also because of her mother’s complicity in the sin involved—it’s a word that resonates throughout all three stories:
Mother deceived me, deceived Midori, deceived everyone. God! What made her do that? Mother herself used the word sinner in her diary: “I and Misugi too will be sinners. And since it is impossible for us not to be sinners, let us be great sinners.”
Nakatani as Midori, wife to Baryshnikov’s Misugi. Photograph by Pasha Antonov.
Shoko recounts in her letter seeing Saiko on her deathbed receiving Midori in an elegant robe called a haori that was decorated with thistles. As layers of the story slowly peel away, events are replayed with a new perspective, and the haori resurfaces anew, before its final appearance on Saiko, who is hit with a twist that changes the perspective, as in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon.
In the second letter, Nakatani slips out of her outfit, revealing a scarlet dress, and loosens her hair. Now, as Midori (who is also Saiko’s cousin), she is walking among the smooth rocks in a wet riverbed, hitherto concealed by the stage floor. In this natural setting, her mask of dutiful, wronged Japanese wife drops to show a woman with erotic compulsion: she has had affairs with a painter and a jockey. She even lies down on the wet stones and writhes sensually.
For the final letter, Nakatani, now as Saiko, slowly strips naked. A box descends from the flies, and she opens it and puts on white traditional clothing: kimono, obi, et al. She reminds Misugi of the Atami Hotel where their affair began, the word sinners, and, surprisingly, her intention to leave him that night—one that she reversed. “Embraced endearingly in your great affection,” she writes, “I can say that I have been happier than a person hopes to be.”
During the monologues, Misugi, on an upper level upstage, fondles a gun. He polishes it, hoists it, holds it in the crook of his arm, all with unfailing intensity. A lesser performer might have merely been window dressing, but Girard has balanced the foreground dialogue by casting Mikhail Baryshnikov as Misugi: his masterly physicality is as powerful as the spoken words.
Duty to family and the subordination of one’s feelings are familiar hallmarks in the films of Yasujiro Ozu, but here those elements are supplemented by the unique storytelling and the striking visuals that create a compelling, immersive experience—one that is well worth a visit.
The Hunting Gun plays at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (450 West 37th St.) through April 15. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Sunday. For tickets and more information visit thehuntinggun.org.
