Always keen to break new ground, Keiko Miyata, artistic director of the New National Theatre Tokyo (NNTT), has created a series titled "With: linking theater" as the centerpiece of this season's program. In this, she has lined up three appetizing collaborations by asking playwrights from Wales, South Korea and Germany to create new works to be staged in Japanese at the NNTT with Japanese actors.
First off in this major series are the Welsh playwright Alan Harris and John E. McGrath, artistic director of the National Theatre Wales (NTW), whose new "The Opportunity of Efficiency" just premiered at the NNTT.
Set in a biotech lab on a local industrial estate, the play starts when a business consultant named Ken (Kosuke Toyohara) is sent there to raise its efficiency. This sends real fear though the staff for a variety of reasons, and the atmosphere steadily worsens. Then a senior member, Iffy (Yuko Miyamoto), begins taking Ken to task over the meaning of this efficiency he is so single-mindedly pursuing.