Review: AKIRA KUROSAWA EXPLAINS HIS MOVIES AND YOGURT (WITH LIVE AND ACTIVE CULTURES!) at Woolly Mammoth

Late in Julia Izumi's play, Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with live and active cultures!), one of the characters asks, "Is that what the whole yogurt thing is about because I'm not getting it?" It's one of several goofball/meta moments in this very theatrical play and marks the spot where Izumi acknowledges that her chosen title may not make sense. But the play itself very much makes sense. No Kurosawas were harmed in the making of this play; TV ads for yogurt, however, take a beating, which is lots of fun. And Izumi's notions about how cultures of all kinds and the people within them express grief differently become vivid as the 110 minute play unfolds. She perceives with clarity the variety of ways that people experience and react to grief, and she synthesizes it with the fact that sometimes making art helps the process. Yogurt becomes an also-ran, its "cultures" notwithstanding.

Taking a page from Thornton Wilder's The Skin of our Teeth, Izumi (actor as well as playwright) uses a speaker's lectern to begin the play a number of times. Ostensibly a presentation about the life and work of the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), Izumi starts, stops, starts over, breaks the fourth wall, changes languages, and indeed introduces Kurosawa to an audience which has been treated to projected gigantic photos from many of his films while it was being seated. Then she gives up on her "lecture" and lets Spielberg do the talking. The use of screens, images, and footage greatly enhances the action, thanks to Video and Projection Design by Patrick W. Lord. Yogurt commercials often interrupt the script; the script often stops being about Kurosawa and becomes a narrative about Japanese-American Izumi's own family; the narrative often turns into a film shoot; the screens often have lines of their own; the fine actor Kento Morita always speaks Japanese when he plays Kurosawa's older brother with whom the filmmaker sometimes lived early in his career when the struggling painter had not yet worked in film. The constant shifting brings liveliness to the storytelling and, in its way, somewhat resembles Kurosawa's style as his own film editor. Lighting Designer Venus Gulbranson successfully illuminates all this and then gets out of the way so that the screen-use is maximally visible. A small acting ensemble directed with economy and precision by Aileen Wen McGroddy takes care of continuity. And thus, two stories get told--a mini-bio of Kurosawa and part of Izumi's life.

Dark events happen in all stories; art/creativity/what people make endure despite events. And the question about what the yogurt is doing in this play is well and truly answered. Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with live and active cultures!) provides a light, often thoughtful evening of theatre on some fascinating and serious topics. (Someone always answers at 988 if you need to talk.) Bonus points for introducing 21st century audiences to the films of a 20th century master. (Kanopy for free streaming; Criterion for streaming and DVDs if the player still works.)