Since art imitates life, award-winning Takuya Kato’s One Small Step, which receives its world première at London's Charing Cross Theatre, is an interesting lens through which to experience a Japanese playwright’s look at a contemporary universal dilemma.
On the surface, it is about choosing to be a parent, but underneath swell treacherous currents of equality, loss and choice that threatened to sink Takashi and Narumi’s plans.
Set in a near future where overpopulation has forced humans to spread onto other planets, a Japanese team has started to colonise an area of the moon, and scientists Takashi and Narumi, who work on the programme, are due to join them.
Kato’s brooding piece is less action than a conversation that takes place within the confines of a revolving set that is part-zoo enclosure, part-boxing-ring, the blocking choreographed so that cameras project intrusive close-ups onto overhead screens that focus unforgivingly on Narumi.
Milla Clarke’s ingenious stage design, a sterile space with no exit, is where the pair prowl around each other and thrash out their differences when, forced by the ticking of a biological clock, Narumi must tell Takashi she is pregnant.
Just how much Narumi and Takashi’s private relationship reflects the practices of young professional Japanese couples is difficult to gauge. The absence of fondness is odd to those well-accustomed to seeing and practising public displays of affection, but curiouser still—and fascinating—is the objective tone of their discussions.
They seem to discuss whether or not Narumi should be “giving birth” as an end in itself, not that they may be having a baby, raising a child and becoming a family.
It is impossible to imagine Susan Momoko Hingley’s strong-willed Narumi cooing over booties, but her dispassionate coldness is revealed to be something else. She is not conflicted, she is caught, and whichever hand she plays she loses. Barely seven weeks pregnant, and already her value is diminishing.
Mark Takeshi Ota plays Takashi, who uncertainly holds the aces and who, like Narumi, unhelpfully propels the discussion into looping orbits that, like the set, go round and round.
With this oddly compelling but strangely emotionless piece, one is left wondering how could these two intelligent people really not get to the realisation that they need to choose the least worst option. It’s hardly rocket science.
One Small Step is part of a short season of plays by Japanese writers and directors, produced by Umeda Arts Theater at Charing Cross Theatre. Discounts are available on tickets booked for both One Small Step and Tattooer.