Box in the Big Trunk
Director: Kuro Tanino
Writer: Kuro Tanino
Cast: Ikuma Yamada, Ichigo Iida, Momoi Shimada, Taeko Seguchi
Part of: Wiener Festwochen

Plot:
A student, stressed out by exams and his relationship with his father, finds himself in a weird and fantastical world, where a pig-woman and a sheep-woman live who mostly try to be helpful but actually aren’t at all. The student finds himself confronted with his repressed sexuality and pretty much all the penises in the world.

Box in the Big Trunk meanders wildly between cringeworthy and wonderfully absurd. At times it is very funny. But mostly its premise remains boring and probably only interesting if you have a penis and struggle with your sexuality.

Tanino comes from a psychoanalytical background, so the play’s absolute obsession with penises shouldn’t surprise. The literalness of it does, though. Not only is there a treetrunk that grows out of the student’s crotch at one point and that produces a white milk when stroked (which is a very obvious but still figurative penis), there are penis lamps, penis chairs, penis flutes. Pretty much penis everythings. The prop department must have had a field day.

In the absurd, if not to say nonsensical structure of the play is alternately really funny and a little boring. In the beginning of the play, I was a little alienated by all of it and then with every penis more it just became funnier – though I admit it was a kind of deperate humor that made me laugh. If I hadn’t laughed, I’d probably have walked out of the play. [I was actually crying for laughter at the end, when they started to play Pachelbel’s Canon on penisflutes and my mother turned around to me with this horrified expression and whispered, “I wanted that to be played at my funeral.” I might have to learn how to play the penis flute now.]

But since that was the atmosphere of the play, it felt out of place when the topic of child abuse was introduced towards the end. I mean, that the student and his father don’t have the most harmonious relationship was pretty clear right from the start. But then it became overtly sexualized and I just didn’t feel like that fit the rest of the play – it was too harsh and too serious a topic.

The play’s best feature was without a doubt the stage design. it was a circular set and worked pretty much like a carousel, leaving all compartments interconnected. Two of these compartments were also divided in two horizontally and each had its own mood and fantastic design. That alone doesn’t make the play worth it, but the entire package does have something.

Summarizing: Very peculair, but not charmless.