Staging Haruki Murakami’s expansive, dual-narrative novel without losing the audience in a narrative muddle is a formidable challenge, but director and choreographer Philippe Decouflé rises to it by filling the massive Barbican stage with a kaleidoscope of dream worlds for Ako Takahashi’s theatrical adaptation. Rather than dissolving into a chaotic scramble of stories, inquiries into memory, technological shifts, and imaginative flights, the production unfolds as a continuous, immaculate coup de théâtre.
The narrative follows two versions of the protagonist, Watashi, portrayed by Tatsuya Fujiwara. One iteration inhabits a noirish Tokyo, while the other navigates a realm constructed of dreams. This second setting is simultaneously beautiful and perilous, defined by a complex plot involving the separation of humans from their shadows, a walled city, roaming creatures, and a professor played by Narushi Ikeda who collects skulls to channel past experiences through sound.
The professor's 17-year-old granddaughter, played by Miu Tomita, accompanies Watashi in Tokyo, resembling a kitsch iteration of the prophetess who guides Aeneas into the underworld. Watashi seeks an escape route to reunite with his shadow, brought to life by Shuntaro Miyao, yet finds himself drawn into the peculiar environment, where he also shares a romance with a librarian played by Misato Morita.
Initially, the performance spirals down a rabbit hole of wonderlands, incorporating kooky humor and nods to both western canonical traditions and pop culture, echoing Murakami's distinct style that spans ancient myth, Lewis Carroll’s Alice, and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou. A playful set designed by K Ishihara highlights its own theatrical construction with cheeky ingenuity.
Visual pyrotechnics pull viewers into the experience, utilizing large projections alongside the speed, flow, and agility of dance movements that hint at anime aesthetics. These elements summon Murakami’s diverse creatures, ranging from underground murks featuring porcupine spikes who flip and cartwheel across the stage to a majestic herd of balletic unicorns.
Decouflé’s choreography demonstrates elastic grace and high athleticism without ever tipping into circus-like territory. The overarching aesthetics are so ravishing that narrative clarity in the opening half hardly matters. While established Murakami fans understand that the storyline's unity will eventually materialize, newcomers might initially feel punch-drunk and befuddled by the relentless onslaught of competing worlds and striking imagery.
Following the intermission, it becomes evident that this initial disorientation is controlled and deliberate, effectively mirroring Watashi’s state of mind. The choreography gradually grows heavy with emotion as Murakami’s universe exposes deeper themes centered on loneliness, grief, mortality, and the fear of disappearing entirely.
At the same time, the central plot involving lost shadows—which represent the true self—carries broader socio-political resonances that feel remarkably contemporary and prescient, despite the original novel publishing in 1985. The atmosphere evokes Neo's reality in The Matrix, while its engagement with technology mirrors concepts explored in Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger. Furthermore, the darker undertones of the perfectionism cultivated within this dream society offer a biting commentary on postwar Japan, or perhaps our modern era defined by artificial intelligence, genuine and fake selves, and machine-constructed subjectivity.
Spanning nearly three hours, the production ultimately leaves spectators with the lingering sensation of having shared a collective dream. It evokes a realm populated by dead animals, missing shadows, and detached humans, while simultaneously embracing unicorns, impossible beauty, and an ocean-like imagination that feels both deeply familiar and entirely alien.