Rakugo, the ancient Japanese art of sit-down comedy, has inspired movies including Shinpei Hayashiya's "Rakugo Monogatari (Rakugo Story)" (2010) and Hideyuki Hirayama's "Shaberedomo Shaberedomo (Talk, Talk, Talk)" (2007), but Yuji Kanda's "Tokyo Teyandei: The Story Teller's Apprentice" (simply called "The Story Teller's Apprentice" in English) is probably the first to unfold entirely backstage at a Tokyo yose (variety) theater.
Based on a hit play by the Uwanosora Toshiro-ichiza theater troupe, the film tracks the comings and goings, ups and downs in the theater's green room in the course of one day's program, if not in real time. As might be expected, there are gags aplenty, though we see no actual rakugo performed. Instead we glimpse faces in the audience and hear snatches of laughter and applause from the point of view of the performers behind the curtain.
Taking hints from incidents in the lives of real rakugo storytellers, the script by Kanda, Toshiro Muraki and Mami Tsuchida delivers a small, steady stream of laughs, with jokes ranging from the obvious to the absurdist, together with a story that begins and ends beyond the theater walls. Kanda's treatment, however, is unabashedly stagey, with no background music or CGI sight gags to pump up the action and make it more movielike (that is, more like other local comedies playing at the multiplex).