Colchester Fringe Festival 2025
Hinohara Village
Doubtful Sound
Genre: Live Music, Music, Performance Art, Theatrical Storytelling, World Music
Venue: Headgate Theatre
Festival: Colchester Fringe Festival
Low Down
Hinohara Village understands the underlying purpose of storytelling – to save and preserve our cultural history. Doubtful Sound has created a storytelling work which is beautifully realized and performed.
Review
Hinohara Village is a small village just on the outskirts of Tokyo. With a dwindling population of 2000, there are fewer and fewer individuals passing down the stories and folklore that once defined the village. The stories and history of this village are at risk of being lost altogether. Doubtful Sound, the storytellers behind the show Hinohara Village, have created this work as an act of preservation. Hinohara Village is not only a masterclass in storytelling but also an essential historical mission. It exists in the perfect in-between of docudrama and traditional storytelling.
Shinako Wakatsuki and Gavin Harrington-Odedra trade off telling stories, moving flexibly between narrator, character, and storyteller. Sherry Sugita accompanies the stories through traditional Japanese music, which she performs with grace, precision, and elegance. Hinohara Village is well-rehearsed and precise in its movements and ideas. Hinohara Village uses props, costumes, and music to supplement the already fascinating stories.
The show covers a wide range of samurai, yokai, and strange and fantastical tales. My personal favorites involved the hairy witch on the mountain who ate children and the story of a man who is told by a monk he is marked with death and will die in a few months. Some of the stories are rather quite short. The meaning, history, and purpose of these stories have been lost to time. Yet, Doubtful Sound shares them anyway. This reinforces their belief that all these stories are worth saving. Even if they are only fragments, their cultural value cannot be lost.
What surprised me was how humorous these stories were. Despite touching on themes of suicide, death, heartbreak, execution, and violence, the show maintains a loving atmosphere never allowing the darkness of some of the stories to darken the mood of the audience. That is in many parts thanks to the brilliance in Wakatsuki and Harrington-Odedra’s storytelling ability.
Hinohara Village stands apart from most storytelling due to its variety, its style, and its mission. Hinohara Village is as much an act of preservation as it is entertainment. The next generation (and the many to follow) deserve to hear these stories in all their strangeness, ever-changing parts, and tradition.
