Demons inhabit the live-performance stage. Nobody can judge the success of a production until after the curtain has risen and fallen. This is what gives drama -- and musical and dance performances -- their peculiar zest. And when the director of a production is a titan of the international theater world, expectations run especially high.
Yukio Ninagawa's "A Streetcar Named Desire" was in the spotlight long before the curtain first went up at the Bunkamura Theater Cocoon in Shibuya. Anticipation was aroused not simply by Ninagawa's involvement, but by the encounter between this cutting-edge Japanese director and one of America's most popular dramatists, Tennessee Williams.
When I asked Ninagawa -- best known for his interpretations of Shakespeare's tragedies, often transferred to a Japanese setting -- about his approach to this production, he said he had aimed for complete realism. Toward this, he visited New Orleans, the setting of "Streetcar." And he has superbly portrayed its social milieu on the stage of the Theater Cocoon.