Theatre review: The Garden of Words

Adapting Japanese animation for the stage seems to be the new big trend, and as well as the Studio Ghibli juggernauts that also means smaller-scale anime like Makoto Shinkai's The Garden of Words, a low-key, dreamlike coming-of-age drama that follows the growing friendship between a teacher and pupil - although their Shinjuku school is evidently big enough that they don't, at first, realise that it links them. Takao (Hiroki Berrecloth) is a friendless 15-year-old who dreams of being a shoemaker when he grows up, while Yukari (Aki Nakagawa) is a literature teacher who's been caught up in a scandal when a student falsely accused her of inappropriate behaviour. Whenever it rains they both skip off school and escape to a temple garden, where she reads poetry and he sketches designs for women's shoes.

James Bradwell, Shoko Ito, Iniki Mariano, Mark Takeshi Ota and Susan Momoko Hingley, who also co-adapts the story with director Alexandra Rutter, provide a chorus of commuters, weather and birds who fill the busy world around the pair's quiet garden.

They also fill in the story that brought them together: Takao lives with his older brother Shota (Bradwell,) who's about to move out and into a flat with his girlfriend (Mariano.) This news hasn't gone down well with their alcoholic mother Reimi (Hingley,) who's reacted by running off with her own new boyfriend. Yukari's ex-boyfriend (Ota,) a PE teacher at the school, has been a lot more supportive to her now than he ever was when they were together. And schoolgirl Shoko (Ito,) who's besotted with an unseen, controlling older boy, has a connection to the rest of the characters that gradually reveals itself.

This is an unquestionably charming show, with Mark Choi's music contributing a lot of the dreamlike feel that contrasts with the very concrete, real-life issues the pair are escaping to the garden from. But it's also a bit too close to its awkwardly unfocused leads - the story reveals itself in bits and pieces, and is ultimately a bit too simple for it to be fully satisfying when its pieces slot together. And I don't know whether it's the size of the stage, or whether the cast didn't have enough rehearsal time with movement director Iskander R.Bin Sharazuddin, or simply if moments of the cast being wind and rain or operating a puppet magpie aren't quite as smoothly integrated into the rest of the story as they could be; but there's an awkwardness to an otherwise excellent cast in these almost balletic sequences.

It is a strong cast though: Berrecloth is charming as Takao, whose obsession with sketching women's shoes comes from trying to connect with his largely absent mother, and definitely has nothing to do with a foot fetish or anything; Nakagawa shows how Yukari has been blindsided and left vulnerable by being given the title of sensei when she's not that much older than her students, as well as leaning into the irony of trying to escape an entirely made-up affair with one teenage boy, only to end up in a quasi-romantic friendship with another one. And Bradwell brings underlying warmth to Shota, who had to provide financially for his brother from a young age and has prioritised earnings over job satisfaction ever since.

It still feels like a dramatic non-sequitur though. Arguably this is the point of this kind of coming-of-age story, a series of events in the boy's life that don't ultimately mean much but will form part of who he grows up to be. But it makes sense to find out the original film comes in under 45 minutes - shorter than the first act of this adaptation. Charm alone isn't enough to stretch the story out to nearly two hours.

The Garden of Words by Susan Momoko Hingley & Alexandra Rutter, based on the anime by Makoto Shinkai & CoMix Wave Films, is booking until the 9th of September at Park Theatre 200.

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Piers Foley.