FringeReview Scotland 2025
Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey
Vanishing Point, Kanagawa Arts Theatre
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre
Venue: Tramway Theatre, Glasgow
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
Directorially, this was a fantastic example of how theatre in its visual form blended with narrative achieves genius. Technically, the vision provides us all with sheer spectacle. With a cast so on point, it’s more than a blend, it becomes its own theatrical beauty.
Review
Our story begins with a man, played by Yuya Tanaka, who meets somebody he hopes shall provide him with work. During the meeting she takes a phone call but is unable to remember her name. That is the entry point for the rest of the narrative. Mizuki, played by Rin Nasu, enters through therapy, who is dealing with the death of her friend, Yuko, who also finds remembering her name a struggle. Intrigued we are on a narrative arc that leads to … a monkey.
Our man ends up in a cheap hotel room being visited by one of the staff: the monkey. In an evening of boredom, our narrator takes a bath and is visited there by that monkey and so begins the explanation to wipe away our confusion. Our monkey, played with such precision by Sandy Grierson, massages, brings beers and conversation which leads to a revelation and confession. He steals, not for money but for connection. But his is a chased profession. Soon we have a couple of people down a sewer on his trail.
Once they do, the lost names can be given back. But this outsider, this creature we seek to put into a box, that we search for explanations for, ends up in a frozen mountainside, away from harm and understanding.
This was beautiful and mysterious. It blended seamlessly theatre and storytelling that I sat enthralled with every twist and every turn. Matthew Lenton has produced quite the masterpiece alongside the artistic director of Kanagawa Arts Theatre Keishi Nagatsuka.
Hinged upon the scenography from Kei Ishihara and Blankrd, soaring through Mark Melville’s incredible soundscape and as for Simon Wilkinson’s lighting. Rarely have I seen such dynamic attention to how light and effect can merge with the theatrical intention on display. It happens from the beginning where the curtain of light that diagonally cuts off our vision of the rest of the stage is used beautifully to introduce us to the performers. It emerges as a snap not a fade and what we are treated to thereafter is a combination of fading into the lurking shadows alongside a visual theatrical language that doesn’t just intrigue it also questions the way we’re looking at ourselves. Darkness is used in this visual language.
When you have the quality of work by Haruki Murakami the storytelling should be relatively straightforward – right? But you have to match the brilliance of an acclaimed author allowing his vision to be translated and matched. Here, both Sandy Grierson and Matthew Lenton, who have written the text along with the translation and dramaturgy from Nozomi Abe, have managed to hold more than their own. They provide a structural opportunity for increasing revelation. It is, after all, quite absurd.
Sandy Grierson gives us a technically gifted monkey able to who can talk, astonish, work in a hotel, quip with the clientele, drink beer, steal names and evade capture.
Fundamental human experience and social issues abound.
There was so much to love. but a word for puppeteer Ailie Cohen. Cohen was in charge of the monkey’s tail. The level of detail gave an element of performance that Vanishing Point have become increasingly known for.
I have often thought of the visual blend of theatricality being a boon to the storytelling of the world. It adds so much creatively but for some they get caught up in their cleverness and the communication gets lost. It gets removed between that axis of narrative and performance. But now and again at that intersection, a moment in time, recognising what may disappear, someone recognises that equal measures make a blend that should not be lost. It is a point worth keeping because you can get drawn into its beauty and becomes an enthralling, challenging and delightful experience. For of you make it to that vanishing point, you get this. Something that exists right where respect, enquiry and vision make theatre.
It’s stunning, simply stunning. And I liked it so much, I bought a t-shirt.
