The Twin Stars

Published Wednesday 19 March 2008 at 17:45 by Nuala Calvi

Mixing biography and fantasy is a tricky task, and one which Mike Kenny embarks on with aplomb in this tale of siblings torn apart by forces greater than themselves.

Taking Japanese children’s author Kenji Miyazawa’s own troubled early life as the starting point for exploring his celebrated story The Twin Stars, Kenny shows us a man torn between duty and passion, memory and present reality as he grieves the loss of his younger sister Toshi.

Forced to work in the family pawnshop in rural Japan, Kenji is haunted by Toshi’s ghost, who visits him daily, demanding stories. Her mischievous, elusive presence is conjured up delightfully by Sachi Kimura’s puppetry, as she wrecks havoc on Kenji’s grey, grown-up world.

The celestial tale of twin stars Chunse and Pose, who accompany the concert of the heavens nightly with their flute playing, becomes a poignant metaphor for the pair’s carefree childhood, which exists now only in imagination and evaporates in the harsh light of day.

But its incorporation in the second half of the play feels rather clunky and disjointed, wrenching us away from the lingering narrative that Kenny sets up in the first half, which never sufficiently develops.

The subtle beauty of the opening design likewise gives way to a puzzling cardboard cut-out theme after the interval, although a fight between the Big Crow Star and a giant scorpion, fashioned from what look like umbrellas and tents, provides considerable compensation.