Thursday , March 28 2024
zero cost house

Theater Review: ‘Zero Cost House’ (for Zoom) by Toshiki Okada

On the evidence of Pig Iron Theatre Company’s Zoom production, noted Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada’s autobiographical Zero Cost House is an ambitious but unfocused piece of meta-theater that never quite gels. Eschewing theater’s usual distilled artifice, the play depicts in abstract style the disjointed perambulations of a real human life – that of the playwright himself.

The production is a superb example of how the digital technology we’re currently forced to use can be well employed in storytelling. Here, though, the storytelling itself isn’t a superb example of anything much.

The play recounts in a listless and roundabout way how Okada’s early obsession with Thoreau’s Walden influenced his life and career. We encounter the playwright at two stages of his life – the present day (actually some time shortly after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster) and 15 years before – and played by multiple actors. He meets Thoreau himself in what I would call a fantasy sequence if the whole thing weren’t in a more-or-less fantasy mode.

Later, as Fukushima turns life upside down for so many Japanese, Okada encounters another real-life character, the charismatic architect Kyohei Sakaguchi, known for his studies of structures built at no cost, such as shanties constructed by the homeless. Sakaguchi calls this work the Zero Yen Project, hence the play’s title. Here, he’s a political rebel who inspires Okada to leave Tokyo for Japan’s safer hinterlands. His tiny cost-free homes are descendants of Thoreau’s cabin, in a way. But I struggle to find significant meaning in this.

Most important, the play doesn’t make us care about Okada. The Fukushima disaster evokes memories of 9-11 and resonates with the coronavirus pandemic of today, but I’m hard put to identify what it might be saying about the lives of artists confronted with unfathomable crisis.

Sakaguchi’s colorful portrayal (by Will Brill) drew me in, but only to make me wish this were his story and not Okada’s. The playwright remains elusive, in spite of, or because of, the variety of faces that depict the different stages and aspects of his life.

In a deeper way, I wished the production’s adept deployment of Zoom technology was in the service of material that had pace and focus. The technical transitions are smooth, the timing sharp (though deliberate), the use of three-dimensional space creative, the panel action eye-catching and evocative. The actors turn in solid performances, which I find especially admirable since they don’t have one another to play off of in physical space. I kept rooting for the script to give them more to settle and bite into. It never came.

Zero Cost House is worth a look as a demo of how far Zoom performance and production technique has come in just a few months. I wish I could say more than that to recommend it. There’s one more performance, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m EDT. Visit the website for more information. Tickets are available here.

About Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Publisher and Executive Editor of Blogcritics as well as lead editor of the Culture & Society section. As a writer he contributes most often to Music, where he covers classical music (old and new) and other genres, and Culture, where he reviews NYC theater. Through Oren Hope Marketing and Copywriting at http://www.orenhope.com/ you can hire him to write or edit whatever marketing or journalistic materials your heart desires. Jon also writes the blog Park Odyssey at http://parkodyssey.blogspot.com/ where he is on a mission to visit every park in New York City. He has also been a part-time working musician, including as lead singer, songwriter, and bass player for Whisperado.

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