Caffeine Theatre's challenging world-premiere play is more interesting than effective, although its subject matter is darkly fascinating. It's about three real women writers of considerable achievement living in different eras in two vastly different cultures: Lady Murasaki ( circa 978-1031 ) , Higuchi Ichiyo ( 1872-1896 ) and Carla Vasio ( living in Rome ) . To cover the turf, the play juggles scenes of contemporary reality with fabricated historical reality and dramatizations of the writings of Murasaki and—especially—Ichiyo. The narrative leaps from contemporary Italy and Japan to late 19th-century and early 11th-century Japan.
It's all based on Vasio's memoir of living in Japan while researching the life of Ichiyo, who remains obscure in the West. Thus, Donald Gecewicz's script is an English adaptation of an Italian work which itself includes translations from Japanese literature. This creates an exceedingly complicated structure with narrative and dramatic lines that are fluid, to say the least. Structure aside, it also means the examination of Japanese literary and social history has been triple filtered before reaching audiences.
Like the Moon Behind the Clouds needs to decide upon its focus: Vasio or Ichiyo? Lady Murasaki ( whose The Tale of Genji, written 1001-1015, is considered the first novel ) is secondary to Vasio and Ichiyo. The work wants to pull in Ichiyo's direction but, to do so, Gecewicz needs to eliminate distracting ( although amusing ) scenes of Vasio and her friends and lover. Their point—the difficulty understanding another culture—is easily grasped or better expressed as Vasio wrestles with Japanese poetic devices.
Ichiyo herself seems a model of the proto-modern woman but also a Japanese Emily Bronte: the educated daughter of a lower-middle-class bureaucrat, she struggled against poverty and the glass ceiling to become published, establishing herself with gritty yet poetic short stories about the Tokyo demimonde before dying at 24 of tuberculosis. Now, that's opera! I don't need Vasio and friends arguing over eating poisonous puffer fish liver.
As staged by Jennifer Shook, the production has visual impact and integrity but a slow and deliberate pace which isn't useful during the lengthy establishing scenes. Also, Ian Miller's evocative video work is lost because the projection screens are too widely spaced in relation to the stage. His images and stage movement are separate from each other rather than integrated. Shook and company utilize a few flourishes of Japanese theater and design—a kabuki-like stage platform, kogen, puppets, clapper sticks, tatami mats, shoji screens, kimonos—but correctly keep the performance vernacular thoroughly Western. Dana Black ( Carla ) , Tanya Chu McBride ( Ichiyo ) and Tom Bateman as the men in their lives effectively lead a congenial ensemble. There's a really strong stage piece in this ambitious script and production, but it's not there yet.
Playwright: Donald Gecewicz after Carla Vasio. At: Caffeine Theatre, Cultural Center Studio. Phone: 312-742-8497; $20
Runs through: Feb. 24