"It is our privilege again to be hosting a Ninagawa production in London. To even contemplate a cultural Olympiad which includes a World Shakespeare Festival without Yukio Ninagawa would be for many of us like Hamlet without the Prince, a sky without a star.
It was a thrilling occasion when I first saw this magnificent Cymbeline when it opened in Tokyo at the beginning of April. It is, of course, one of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays, hence the reason it is not often done. That does not necessarily deter Ninagawa, as many who will have seen his celebrated Pericles at the National Theatre – another difficult play – will bear witness to.
Ninagawa embraces such challenges, and with his strong visual imagination, crosses the divide between cultures, although he often questions himself as to whether he does so successfully. He finds resonances in this play which correspond to the history of his own country, as will be seen in the background art of one particular scene. We see the play through the eyes of a culture which, though different from our own, in many ways has much in common with us.
The themes of retribution, reconciliation and, of course, redemption are common to all peoples in the world, and in Asia this is usually expressed in a manner that we in the West recognise and warm to. For once in his life, Ninagawa has indulged a change of text in a Shakespeare play. The final scene of the play centres around a cedar tree. In Ninagawa’s play this is changed to a pine tree, the single pine tree that was standing after the horrific earthquake and tsunami of 2011. It stands as a symbol of hope for the future.
In what, alas, is a naughty world, Japan continues creatively to acknowledge that tomorrow the sun will rise again."
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