Fringe: Two Modern Noh Plays by Yukio Mishima

Last night's Fringe outing for me was Two Modern Noh Plays by Yukio Mishima. I was intrigued to see this because I was curious about the traditional Japanese art form of Noh theatre, and I knew of Mishima from his autobiographical Confessions of a Mask and wanted to see more work by this pioneering gay Asian writer.

I later learned that originally this piece contained Five plays and that Noh theatre normally has little comedic scenes in between the plays The two works chosen for the Fringe included a story about a poet who encounters an old woman in a park and realizes she is beautiful after being transported to the past through her stories. The other work involved a woman waiting for a man to return to her, while being held captive by another woman who enjoys the unrequited love of her prisoner.

I also found out that Mishima's work isn't completely traditional Noh theatre, though it does use elements of it, i.e. the masks and some dancing, a supernatural element. Overall though, it put the No into Noh for me. With so many picks at the Fringe, there will always be hits and misses, and unfortunately to me, this was not one I would tell people to rush out to see, unless they were avid fans of Mishima.