Director and choreographer Philippe Decouflé has taken on the ambitious task of staging Haruki Murakami’s intricate, dual-narrative novel at London’s Barbican Theatre. Adapted by Ako Takahashi, the production avoids becoming a cluttered mess, instead transforming the expansive stage into a seamless and immersive theatrical spectacle. The story follows two versions of the protagonist, Watashi, played by Tatsuya Fujiwara; one navigates a noirish Tokyo, while the other exists within a dream-like landscape where humans are separated from their shadows. Instead, it is turned into one long immaculate coup de théâtre.
The narrative is complex, involving a walled city, a professor—played by Narushi Ikeda—who collects skulls to project past memories through sound, and a web of roaming animals. Accompanying Watashi in the Tokyo storyline is the professor’s 17-year-old granddaughter, portrayed by Miu Tomita, who mirrors the role of the prophetess guiding Aeneas into the underworld. Watashi’s journey is driven by a desire to reunite with his shadow, a pursuit that leads him into a strange realm and a relationship with a librarian, played by Misato Morita. So he can be reunited with his shadow (Shuntaro Miyao), but is drawn to this strange world too and has a romance with a librarian (Misato Morita), watashi seeks escape.
Designer K Ishihara created a playful, self-referential set that embraces the source material’s penchant for kooky humor and diverse cultural references, drawing from Western mythology, Lewis Carroll, and Luis Buñuel. The production relies on impressive visual pyrotechnics, ranging from large-scale projections to choreography that mimics the speed and agility of anime. The cast brings Murakami’s fantastical creatures to life, including porcupine-spiked underground “murks” and a series of balletic unicorns. Initially, it spirals into a rabbit hole of wonderlands, with kooky humour and references to western canonical and pop culture, as is Murakami’s way, from ancient myth to Lewis Carroll’s Alice and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou. Designed by K Ishihara, shows its own theatrical construction with cheeky playfulness, a playful set.
Decouflé’s choreography is both athletic and graceful, grounding the surreal aesthetic. While the first half of the nearly three-hour performance may leave some viewers feeling overwhelmed by the density of the imagery, the second half clarifies that this disorientation is a deliberate reflection of the protagonist’s mental state. As the narrative progresses, the movement captures deep themes of grief, loneliness, and the fear of mortality. Decouflé’s choreography is unsurpassable in its elastic grace and athleticism without seeming circus-like. The aesthetics on the whole are so ravishing that it doesn’t matter if the story is not easy to grasp in the first half.
Beyond its visual splendor, the production touches on significant socio-political themes. Though the original book was published in 1985, its exploration of lost shadows—representing a person’s “true” self—feels increasingly relevant. The dream world’s sinister, tech-driven perfectionism serves as a sharp commentary on contemporary concerns, such as AI, the blurring lines between real and synthetic selves, and the machine-constructed nature of modern subjectivity. The experience leaves the audience feeling as though they have participated in a collective dream, blending the haunting imagery of dead animals and unfeeling humans with the beauty of an boundless, ocean-like imagination. Technological advances in society and the imagination, it could have become a scramble of stories and inquiries into memory.
