Truth cuts many ways in sharp ‘Rashomon’

Powerful performances run through the fable's wide range of emotions.

By ERIC MARCHESE Special to the Register

As current events in Washington, D.C., have borne out, people tend to view "the truth" as an absolute. But more often than not, it's an elastic, highly subjective substance. This is never more apparent than in "Rashomon," Fay and Michael Kanin's famous tale of a rape and murder in a medieval Japanese forest. In only its second season--and its first at its new home, the Empire Theater in downtown Santa Ana --Rude Guerrilla Theater Co. takes a stab (literally) at the stage version, adapted by the Kanins from Akira Kurosawa's internationally famous 1952 film. (The film, in turn, was based on a combination of two short stories penned by a Japanese author during the 1920s).

A samurai and his wife (Monte Scott, Pamela Pedder) are passing through a heavily wooded forest. They encounter a bandit, Tajumaro (Adam Clark), whose fierce reputation precedes him. He attacks the samurai and binds his hands behind his back, then rapes the man's wife. The samurai is found dead in the forest, having been run through by a sword. His wife is nowhere to be found. A judicial tribunal attempts to uncover the truth of the incident. But in the questioning of Tajumaro, the wife and, through a spiritual medium, the slain samurai, three different stories emerge. A "framing" story involving the town priest (Bradley Whitfield), a woodcutter (Matt Tully) and a wily wigmaker (Robert D. Nunez) produces yet a fourth version of the event.

Director Patrick Gwaltney has taken this well-known, fable-like meditation on the real nature of "the truth" and crafted a staging that's visually arresting and thematically powerful. Performances of pure, elemental intensity make this production a striking one that sticks in your memory. Central to Rude Guerrilla's staging is Adam Clark's volatile, passionate portrayal of Tajumaro. Matching his intensity is Monte Scott as the stoic, proud samurai. Their sword-fighting scenes are well-choreographed by Gwaltney and [Shaun O’Neal]. As the wife subjected to humiliating sexual violation, Pamela Pedder is more believable when recounting herself as haughty and defiant toward both her husband and the bandit than as the timid, dutiful wife painted by others. The wife's testimony offers a quarreling scene with a too-contemporary tone; aside from this, the modulation of moods from scene to scene is perfect.

The characters in the framing story are etched as distinctly. As the priest, Bradley Whitfield is gentle yet morose, riddled with self-doubt. Robert Nunez is vibrant and robust as the cynical wigmaker, convinced that the human spirit is, at best, selfish, weak, petty and cowardly. Matt Tully's dour woodcutter is a glum, reticent soul uncertain of the best course of action. The supporting roles are painted as colorfully, especially Jennifer Bishton's spooky turn as the medium. Her voice wavering, she convulses while channeling, then collapses after each episode. Brian Newell's sound design, complete with moving music, provides a powerful cue to our emotions. By the end of this deceptively simple tale, there's even room for genuine human compassion.

The California Tech

When I heard my co-worker Dave Barton’s theatre company Rude Guerrilla was going to stage a production of Fay and Michael Kanin’s Rashomon (an adaptation of the Kurosawa film, which was itself an adaptation of two Akutagawa Ryuunosuke short stories) I was filled with anticipation because the story is so good, but also with dread because nobody involved with the production is Japanese. The exciting, thought provoking Rashomon us Rude Guerrilla’s most accessible play yet, the tale of a rape and murder in a medieval Japanese forest told from four radically different viewpoints.

Director Patrick Gwaltney has wrapped the seating of the tiny theatre around three sides of the stage, bringing an effective intimacy and immediacy to both the action scenes and the more subdued moments. The acting in genera; is good, but particular kudos should be given to Adam Clark, whose fierce bandit Tajomaru bristles with rugged virility, Robert Dean Nunez as the weaselly, sarcastic wigmaker, and Jennifer Bishton, who is quite powerful in her brief role as a medium channeling a dead man’s soul.

Unfortunately, nobody seemed to have done much research into Japan, and the result is that a good play is sullied by several inaccuracies and flaws. Nobody can agree on a pronunciation of Tajomaru’s name; the otherwise beautiful set is marred by a cliched and clumsily written kanji character and, at one transition point, Chinese opera music is played, an error that carries the insulting implication that all Asians are the same. But the biggest problem was that Pamela Pedder seriously strained credibility as a medieval Japanese woman, playing her far too modern and Western. Her jarring performance undercuts and cheapens her character’s motivations.
All problems aside, seeing this play up close brings an engaging new dimension to a familiar story.

STAGE REVIEW By

Robert Koehler Special To The Times

If the caliber of its productions continues along the lines of its second offering—a revival of Fay and Michael Kanin’s adaptation of the brain-tickling Japanese tale “Rashomon”—Rude Guerrilla Theater Company might want to think about changing its name. Neither rude nor subversive, director Patrick Gwaltney’s staging is rather a study in grace, quietly building passions and the human heart’s mysteries.

For those who have followed the development of Orange County’s young theater companies, “Rashomon” marks a true maturation: It represents the melding and refining of talents from Rude Guerrilla, Stages and the former Revolving Door Productions. Far from the ultra-low-budget, happily slapdash stagings of these groups in the past, “Rashomon” is, among other things, a piece of theater on an ideally intimate scale. The kids are growing up. For others unfamiliar with the evolution of Orange County theater groups, the show still provides a fascinating comparison to Akira Kurosawa’s lean, chiseled, 1952 film version. Except for one crucial detail, the Kanins’ adaptation hews closely to the film’s story line, which is a small masterpiece of multiple-view narrative.

“Rashomon’s” impact derives from its view that storytelling has power unto itself, that it informs our view of life and human beings. How the story is told, and from whose point of view, can dramatically alter that perspective. An encounter in a forest clearing between a bandit (Adam Clark) and a samurai warrior (Monte Scott) and his wife (Pamela Pedder) leads to the death of the warrior-husband. The bandit has been arrested and brought to court for murder. The wife and a humble woodcutter (Matt Tully) who witnessed the incident testify. This being ancient Japan, a medium (Jennifer Bishton) conjures up the dead husband’s spirit to report his account.

The story is told in a double-layered flashback, flash-forward structure, so that the woodcutter, a forlorn Buddhist priest (Kreg Donahoe) and a nosy, cynical wig maker (Robert Dean Nunez) review the previous day’s trial while stuck in the rain under Rashomon Gate. First the bandit’s, then the wife’s, then the husband-via-medium’s stories are recounted, then reenacted in the second flashback layer. The wig maker—and we ourselves—grow more doubtful of the truth of the matter. For “Rashomon’s” very structure confronts us with the fragility of human memory, the dubiousness of stories told and told again. The woodcutter’s own story is left for last, and it seems the truest to the wig maker’s ears because it is the most absurd and exemplifies human weakness. It is also the play’s and this production’s weakest passage, marred by Pedder’s and Scott’s feeble attempt to be spatting spouses, and capped by a kooky accident that will strike some as an ideal surprise and others as a poor substitute for the more serious action in the Kurosawa film.

Apart from that flaw, this is a quietly impassioned “Rashomon.” Gwaltney and set designer Don Hess have devised a superb use of the Empire Theater’s space—creating an extreme thrust stage with the theater’s modular seating so that the alternating action between the upstage Rashomon Gate and the downstage courtroom and forest scenes flow seamlessly. The effect, combined with Jim Book’s atmospheric lighting and Brian Newell’s sensitive sound and music montage, is a morality play that unfolds like a dream. The frequent acting histrionics seen previously at Revolving Door and Stages are virtually gone here, with Stages vet Gwaltney enforcing a fine, ritualized pace, yet punctuating it with some fierce, Hong Kong-inspired combat. In the notably non-Asian cast, ex-Revolving Door’s Bishton furthers her reach as a fearless actress, while another Stages regular, Donahoe, is a quiet, grieving center of the drama. Clark exudes an animal masculinity that might attract any damsel in the woods, and Nunez injects a level of comic bitterness that turns a simple tale into a complex debate on good and evil.

Rashomon
Reviewed by Kristina Mannion


Demonstrating the often elastic nature of truth, Fay and Michael Kanin's tightly crafted Rashomon is an intriguing exercise in shifting perspectives--one that deals out few concrete facts, instead dwelling more on man's tendency to twist the truth and alter reality to suit his own needs. Presented as a conversation between three men at a Japanese temple gate, the script plays out as a murder mystery of sorts: a young samurai and his wife are accosted by a bandit in the forest, the wife is raped, and the samurai is murdered. Strangely, all of the witnesses to the tragic event--including the victim himself--offer different testimony regarding the circumstances of the crime. Did the bandit commit the murder? The dishonored wife? Or did the samurai himself run his sword through his heart? The playwrights manage to present each of these possibilities, cleverly spinning each scenario with a thread of plausibility that leaves the truth in doubt.

According to Patrick Gwaltney, director of the Rude Guerrilla Theater Company's current production of Rashomon, this unresolved state reinforces the idea that "truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder." Indeed, Rashomon has become a term signifying this shifting notion of perception vs. reality, often without regard to the presence of seemingly unquestionable facts. Unfortunately, Gwaltney's
unconvincing staging doesn't sufficiently drive home this underlying message, or the story's larger application to all of us, whose lives are similarly filled with elements of truth and fabrication.

Credit where it's due: The well-rounded RGTC company does an admirable job conjuring the right atmosphere for this tale of murder and conjecture. Using minimal props and set elements, Don Hess has converted the RGTC's small Empire Theatre into a perfect playing arena, including a weathered temple gate and a large tree stump to suggest the crime scene; Michelle Fontenot and Gwaltney's team effort in costume design creates a precise look for all of the characters, and Brian Newell's apt sound design provides subtle cues and transitions that take us back to the time of the samurais. Still, this carefully crafted ambience falters in the presence of some imperfect casting and the failure of most of the players to fully realize every aspect of the Kanins' multi-dimensional characters. It's understandable that, short of filling each role with a Japanese actor, Rashomon is perhaps not the easiest work to cast with the idea of complete authenticity in mind. But many of the actors here are not only too modern and "Western" in appearance and manner--many of them are also too flat or static in their characterizations.

As the samurai and the wife, for example, Monte Scott and Pamela Pedder should contribute to the changing dynamics of the murder scene, as described differently by each witness, but they remain fairly fixed in their portrayals. As the bandit, the more credible Adam Clark works admirably with his character's changes--from a fearsome thief to a roguish womanizer to an easily duped and supplicating coward. Also adding some spark are Robert Dean Nunez, as one of the men who recall the murder in flashback; Johnna Adams, as the mother of the samurai's wife, and Jennifer Bishton, forceful as the medium called to channel the dead samurai's testimony. These, however, cannot compensate for the unevenness and relative inertia of the production. Gwaltney and his ensemble end up leaving us with a quickly fading impression of the play's vivid characters and of the Kanins' interesting take on the sometimes unreliable truth.