The Lighthouse

by Yukio Mishima

ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PREMIERE

directed by Benny Sato Ambush

Unspoken desire breaks the surface of a post-war family's placid life in Mishima's passionate drama from 1949, in a new English-language translation.

Fresh out of the Japanese navy in American-occupied Japan, 25-year-old Noboru was startled when he first met Isako, the attractive 30-year-old woman who married his widowed father.

Since then, Noboru and Isako's silent attraction to each other has simmered beneath the surface. A close-quarters vacation to Oshima Island south of Tokyo ruptures their pact, casting the whole family into dangerous waters. Noboru’s teenage sister Masako bears witness and is forced to find her way from innocence into the world of adults.

The Festival presents The Lighthouse in a new English translation by Mishima scholar Laurence Kominz, in collaboration with acclaimed director Benny Sato Ambush. This will be the English translation’s first production.

Adapted from Jean Racine’s 17th-century tragedy Phèdre -- itself a retelling of the story of Phaedra from Greek mythology -- The Lighthouse is one of Mishima’s most frequently performed one-act plays in Japan. The 1949 play is written as a shingeki, a Japanese theater form based on modern realism.

“There is a strong subterranean undercurrent of repressed sexuality bursting at the seams throughout the play,” says Ambush. “It is heavy in the spring air, all that yearning and wanting and desire... Williams and Chekhov would be proud.”

CAST

• Yoshiro Kono as YUKICHI

• Lya Yanne as ISAKO

• Sam Hamashima* as NOBORU

• Haley Sakamoto* as MASAKO

• Natsuko Hirano* as JUNKO

* Appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity