John Beer

The port city of Kobe is the hometown of one of Japan's most celebrated authors, Haruki Murakami. On January 26, 1995, it also became the site of the second-worst Japanese earthquake of the twentieth century. Twenty seconds of seismic activity left 5,100 dead and 300,000 homeless. In the aftermath of the quake, Haruki wrote a set of six short stories, meditations on hope and disaster, collected in English as "After the Quake." This fall, Frank Galati will direct the premiere of his dramatic adaptation of Haruki's stories at Steppenwolf.

The Steppenwolf version focuses upon the stories "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" and "Honey-pie," which together demonstrate the blend of domestic realism and wild fantasy that make Haruki a worthy counterpart to Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Donald Barthelme. In "Super-Frog," a giant frog appears to the collection agent Katagiri, enlisting his help in protecting Tokyo from an even larger, more destructive earthquake. "Honey-pie" delicately explores the domestic triangle that surrounds a little girl traumatized by the images of the quake.

"After the Quake" marks Galati's return to Chicago stages after a yearlong absence. Galati, who will also direct his new adaptation of Gertrude Stein, "Loving Repeating," next spring at the MCA, found Haruki's stories inherently theatrical. The tension between the fantastic and the familiar and the intimate focus on small spaces in the stories reflect the conditions of the stage. The combination of the lyric Japanese writer and the director frequently honored for his literary adaptations makes "After the Quake" one of the most intriguing productions this fall in Chicago.

(2005-08-31)

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