Shun-kin

Synopsis

Shun-kin, inspired by two texts written in 1933, A Portrait of Shunkin and In Praise of Shadows by Japanese writer Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, moves between the neon glow of Japan and the vanished world of the Meiji era and uncovers moments of light in a world of darkness. McBurney and Complicite tell a tale of devotion, passion and power, where beauty is unforgiving and love is blinding. Emerging from traditional Japanese culture this powerful production reveals how close beauty and violence can be. Shun-kin is performed in Japanese with English surtitles.

Our Review:

5 February 2009

  At the heart of Shun-kin, the latest production from Simon McBurney’s Complicite, in a co-production with barbicanbite 09 and the Setagaya Public Theatre, Tokyo, is a simple love story: that of a blind, wealthy merchant’s daughter and her slightly older apprentice lover, who blinds himself for love after she has treated him cruelly and been assaulted by another suitor.

The story comes from the popular Japanese writer Jun’chiro Tanizaki who appeals to our modern fetishes of sexuality and the body, the pleasures and perversions of our real and imagined lives, according to the scholar Stephen Dodd. What appeals, obviously, to McBurney, is the chance to place a chillingly observed relationship in a context of modern fascination.

He follows the original in having the tale recounted by a narrator living in Osaka in the 1930s, the real time of the story itself. This woman pores religiously over the text, hunched in a small pool of...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

Sycamore Flint - 18 February 2009:

I was front row and can see what Gareth James means although it wasn't too bad, and as with many surtitled shows I found I didn't need to read every single caption to get a sense of what was happening. The piece came across to me as a meditation on single-mindedness; one lead character is blind and utterly focused on teaching the shamisen, the other is completely devoted to her to the point of total selflessness. We're invited to ask whether the resulting intensity of their relationship is pure or destructive. The voiceover device is well-used, unobtrusive and nicely ties things up at the end when the contrast of what we've just seen with the noise and light of the modern world comes crashing in upon us. I'm surprised by the WOS review's contention that there is not enough emotional breakout; I thought the emotion was sharply magnified by being held in check for so much of the time, and exploding once or twice. The whole thing has a pleasingly pared-down feel. At first I was unsure, but found myself gripped and the 110 minutes passed quickly....

Read more and add your own review