After the Quake
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For this Steppenwolf Theatre Company world premiere, adapter-director Frank Galati combines two of the stories in Murakami’s 2002 book. In “Honey Pie” a lonely writer, Junpei, still loves a woman he met in college, Sayoko, who married his best friend instead. When her daughter, Sala, suffers nightmares after the quake, Sayoko asks Junpei for help, and he makes up stories about a clever bear to calm the little girl. Galati’s invention is to make the second tale, “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,” part of Junpei’s story within a story, as the six-foot amphibian asks a beleaguered, unappreciated bank loan officer, Katagiri, for assistance in fighting a giant worm determined to set off another earthquake in Tokyo. Despite its comic-book outlines, even this narrative is mournfully wistful rather than frenzied. Whether Super-Frog is the loan officer’s hallucination or a genuine superhero, he and Katagiri are outsiders who form a touching relationship, and the end presents Katagiri with both loss and the possibility of a richer life. “Honey Pie” ends with Junpei’s declaration that he wants “to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”
After the Quake is different from some of the literature that’s attracted Galati in the past: in the late 80s he captured entire eras in the large-scale, populist Grapes of Wrath and the whimsical She Always Said, Pablo, devoted to modernist art, literature, and music. By contrast Murakami addresses the fragile links between ordinary people–and one extraordinary frog–who sometimes have difficulty putting these links into words, especially the emotionally paralyzed writer. Wisely, Steppenwolf is presenting this quiet, formal adaptation in its smaller, newly reconfigured upstairs theater. (The new permanent proscenium works well for After the Quake, but future productions may feel the loss of the old, more flexible space.)
When: Through 2/19: Tue-Sun 7:30 PM. Also 3 PM Sat-Sun.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Michael Brosilow.
