The Garden of Words
I just happened to see this advertised at the Park Theatre, Finsbury Park and I thought it looked interesting, so following my usual thought processes I bought tickets without any further research. The play opens with rain and a bustling street and umbrellas and then a packed train journey before schoolboy Takao (Hiroki Berrecloth) ends up sheltering from the rain. There’s an older woman, Yukari (Aki Nakagawa), already in the shelter and there's a bird watching and swooping around them. The rest of the first half of the play consists of a series of episodes playing out the back stories to these characters. It looked good and it was atmospheric but I had trouble pulling it together to make anything cohesive. Then when you add that although the dialogue was in English but with chunks of Japanese at key points, it was fair to say I was engaged but confused. Why all the shoes I kept wondering… why a shoemaker? After a restorative ice cream we came b...