Silence

By CHRIS JONES

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MILWAUKEE A Milwaukee Repertory Theater and Subaru Acting Company production of a play in one act by Stephen Dietz, adapted from the novel by Shusaku Endo. Directed by Joseph Hanreddy and Ganshi Murata. Sets and
 
Cast: Ryuji Mizuno (Kichijiro), Hiroyuki Nishimoto (Inoue), Yukihiro Yoshida (Interpreter), Yuichi Nakamura (Mokichi), Shinobu Sato (Monica), Yoshiyuki Kaneko (Ichizo), Ren Iwamatsu (Guard/Sailor), Chiaki Nemoto (Concubine/Prisoner) , Lee E. Ernst (Rodrigues), Torrey Hanson (Garrpe), Peter Silbert (Valignano), Marco Barricelli (Ferreira), Matt Penn (Acoltye).
 

The Milwaukee Rep's season-opening collaboration with the Subaru Acting Company is an erudite and intellectually stimulating new adaptation by Steven Dietz of a Japanese novel by Shusaku Endo. Performed by a cast of American and Japanese actors, the resulting bilingual production is a beguiling, beautifully designed mix of Eastern and Western dramatic styles that's appropriate for a play that explores the cultural constraints of European Christianity. A Japanese tour follows this Milwaukee premiere.

Dietz, a prolific Seattle-based author, is best known for his highly contemporary plays "Lonely Planet" and "God's Country." Endo's semi-historical novel, though, takes place in the 17th century, when European priests were trying to create Japanese Christians with missionary zeal, despite the persecution of the religion by the country's feudal (and feuding) leadership.

This heady play tells the story of one such priest who was tortured for his Jesuit cause, just before Japan wiped out all traces of Christianity and closed itself off from the West for some 250 years. The central character of "Silence" is a Portuguese father named Rodrigues (Lee E. Ernst), who emulates the great Father Ferreira (the impressive Marco Barricelli), a trailblazing priest who was sent to forge converts in Nagasaki. Unfortunately for Rodrigues, the Japanese authorities block his actions at every turn, and, far worse, they torture the very peasants the priest has converted to his own religion. By the end of the play, Rodrigues meets a much-changed Ferreira and discovers that even his role model has been forced to deny his Christianity to survive the tortures of a society so culturally removed from Western teachings.

On a deeper level, the relentlessly philosophical "Silence" probes many interesting questions, such as the usefulness of a religion that only causes suffering, especially when its God remains agonizingly "silent" in the face of his followers' extreme pain. There's also the provocative issue concerning whether the outward forms of Christianity were (and are) hopelessly Western and thus dangerously undermining of Japanese culture -- and harmful to its people.

By the end of the play, the abused, weary and confused central character is beginning to realize that the colonizing European church is a political beast and that spirituality is a lot more muddled than he first thought. He's a missionary defeated by his mission.

Dietz does a splendid job theatricalizing -- and simplifying -- such a complex piece of Eastern narrative. The play is too slow and confusing in its early moments, but once the conflicts are clarified, Dietz's dialogue becomes increasingly crisp and compelling.

In a surprisingly spectacular production co-directed by Joseph Hanreddy and Ganshi Murata, all of this intellectual debate takes place on a wooden stage backed by a multitude of ever-changing projections and strange silhouettes of tortured prisoners hanging in a place called the Pit. Kent Dorsey's quite splendid design fuses the two theatrical traditions in the most vivid of manners , ensuring that this dangerously talky show never becomes boring.

The cast is uniformly strong, with the eight Japanese performers especially enthralling the Milwaukee audience.

The linguistic demands of this piece are such that it would be difficult to produce elsewhere, and its themes are hardly commercial. But it's good to see the Milwaukee Rep return to interesting new material after a couple of years in which the mainstage has been overly dominated by repertory staples. With artistic director Hanreddy now joined by Dan Fallon as the theater's new managing director, this long-established regional house should be poised for other new challenges.

Lighting, E. Kent Dorsey; costumes, Kiichi Arai; sound, Rob Milburn and Shiro Yamakita; music, Toru Ueda; production stage manager, Judy Berdan. Opened Sept. 10, 1995, at the Powerhouse Theater. Reviewed Sept. 17; 720 seats; $ 28 top. Running time:2 HOURS , 25 MIN.