The Bee
Ido is a successful businessman and upstanding member of society who arrives home one day to find his wife and son taken hostage by a convict.
Rather than sit tight, serving up outrage and tears for a cynical media, Ido decides to take matters into his own hands and kidnap his opponent’s family in revenge. In the process, he discovers his own surprising propensity for victimisation - especially of the rape and child-mutilation variety.
If it sounds nasty, it is but legendary Japanese theatre-maker Hideki Noda’s retelling of this seventies short story is also darkly funny, extremely stylish and original.
Slow motion, Reservoir Dogs-style sequences rub backs with object theatre and physical comedy, while frantic scenes involving hacks tying Ido up in actual and metaphorical knots contrast with a slow ballet of everyday life as a torturer.
Noda’s own cross-dressing performance as the kidnapped stripper-wife is at times hard to read but delivers some delightfully weird moments, while Kathryn Hunter is outstanding as Ido, freakishly believable as a middle-aged man whose identity is unravelling before his eyes.
Miriam Buether’s fun-filled design offers plenty of distraction, even if style definitely rules over content in this stinging parable.
Production information
- By:
- Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan, based on the original story by Yasutaka Tsutsui
- Management:
- Noda Map and Soho Theatre
- Cast:
- Kathryn Hunter, Hideki Noda, Tony Bell, Glyn Pritchard
- Director:
- Hideki Noda
- Design:
- Miriam Buether
Production information can change over the run of the show.
Run sheet
- Soho London
- June 27-July 15 2006
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