SFist Reviews: Concerning Strange Devices From the Distant West
Bruce McKenzie and Teresa Lim in Berkeley Rep's latest production. Photo by Kevin Berne
Berkeley Rep's latest production, a world premiere written by Naomi Iizuka and directed by Waters, is no exception. Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West is a taut and well executed play, with clever shifts in time that give it an epic scope while still hewing closely to a few characters and what they have to say.
Iizuka titled the play after a 19th-century photography manual written by a Dutch trader for a Japanese audience, to teach them how to use Western cameras. Photography serves as the central theme in Iizuka's play, symbolic both of Japan's modern history and of contemporary ideas about identity, forgery, the consumption of images, and the way we write history.
The action begins in late-19th-century Japan, when an American woman finds her way to a fellow Westerner's photography studio in Yokohama. But just when you think the play is going to hinge somehow on the personality conflict that erupts between the surly photographer and a presumptuous tourist, the action shifts to contemporary Japan, and an apparent flirtation between an American art collector and a translator. The collector is also a professor of art history, and he's there to see about some Meiji-era photographs like the ones we see being produced in the opening scenes. The play becomes something of a sexual mystery, finally focused on the disappearance of two characters from different time periods, each perhaps seeking sexual freedom.
Like all good plays, it's a tough one to summarize, so we'll stop there. By bending time in surprising ways — bridging several generations on the stage within a few lines of dialogue — Iizuka pulls off some marvelous and original moments in this play. The Strange Devices extend not only to the plot, but to an amazing set Mimi Lien with lighting by Alexander Nichols. The entire stage is divided by shutters and sliding panels like the inside of a camera, and it feels incredibly organic to the action of the play. Some of the final intrigues of the story don't feel terribly compelling or clear, but they seem to matter less in the end than the bounces through time and ideas about objectification, and photography itself.
Waters' direction, as always, is sparing and top-notch. Kate Eastwood Norris, whose monologues bookend the piece, does a terrific job of winning over the audience with charm and timing, and Johnny Wu and Teresa Lim are both equally strong in their multiple roles. Danny Wolohan, in his limited stage time, is comical as two incarnations of the same blowhard, and Bruce McKenzie does an admirable job carrying much of the show via his twin roles as the photographer and the art history professor.
It's a heady, witty, at times academic piece of theater and one that has a great deal of style. Like we said, we always wish we could see more where this came from.
'Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West' plays through April 11th. Get tickets here.