BWW Reviews: Relevant and Moving SADAKO Lays the Foundations for Constructing Peace

The origins of SADAKO as a theatre piece for young audiences are in playwright, Peter Hayes, and director, Jacqueline Dommisse's common love of Eleanor Coerr's children's book, SADAKO AND THE THOUSAND PAPER CRANES. The book is based on the life of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who survived the bombing of Hiroshima only to contract leukaemia a decade later as a consequence of being exposed to radiation during the blast and its aftermath. Sasaki is as well-known a figure in Japan and elsewhere in the world as Anne Frank is to us in South Africa, with Coerr's book used as the basis for classroom studies and as a starting point for discussions on peace education. This revival of Hayes and Dommisse's 1998 puppet play introduces Sasaki's story to a new generation of South African audiences and is as relevant now in its plea for peace as it was 15 years ago.

The story of SADAKO is devastatingly straightforward. Sadako leads an ordinary childhood: she quibbles with her mother over her behaviour, writes down her thoughts in a journal, plays games with her best friend, Tomiko, and pursues athletic interests under the coaching of her brother, Masahiro. Of course it is precisely the normality of her life, invested with a great deal of human detail by Hayes in his script, that makes Sadako's collapse midway through the play, as well as her subsequent decline, so moving. Hayes delineates each character cleanly. There is a sense of economy to his writing that is a trademark of (some) Japanese literature, making it resonant without being overstated, which also gels well with the choice to tell the story through the medium of puppetry. Dommisee's work in bringing the story to life in this style is sensitive and reverent. Her direction of the actors as they manipulate the puppets, designed by Janni Younge, and deliver the dialogue has a clarity that unifies the entire production.

Together, the writing and puppetry make it possible to watch the unwatchable, the perishing of a child even as she hopes for salvation. Sadako's hope lies in the legend of the thousand origami cranes. The crane is a mystical creature in Japanese mythology that is believed to live for 1000 years. By making one paper crane for each of those years, the maker is entitled to a wish. When Tomiko brings Sadako a paper crane as a gift, Sadako starts folding cranes in earnest, each one infused with her hope for survival.

The mythology built up around Sasaki's history has created different versions of the story based on her life and the manner in which it communicates its themes. One key variation comes late in her story, after Sasaki has started folding her cranes. The exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum tells us that Sasaki folded 1000 cranes and many more before she died in October 1955. In Coerr's novel, Sasaki folds 644 cranes before her death. The remaining 356 cranes were folded by her family and friends and were buried with her body. Although the creative spark that led to the creation of SADAKO was Coerr's novel, Hayes goes with the version of the story put forward by the museum. I have no idea which is more historically accurate and I am unconvinced that slavish historical accuracy is always necessary in dramatic interpretation anyway. What this choice meant for me in the theatre was that I had to battle an oppressive sense of nihilism when Sadako perished to get into an emotional state aligned with the thematic concerns of the production. There is a footnote to Sasaki's story in which schoolchildren completed the 356 cranes that Coerr's book tells us Sasaki could not as part of the preparations for the Goodwill Games in 1990. These were launched into the sky in honour of Sasaki and as a wish for world peace. I feel as though carrying that wish forward is the point of Sasaki's story. The feeling with which I had hoped to leave the theatre was that sense of meaning, of flight rising out of the depths of despair. Instead, I was left with many questions, which is almost as good - but not quite.

The cast of SADAKO breathe vivid life into the characters that inhabit this story. As Sadako, Roshina Ratnam perfectly captures the spirit of this young girl as she lives out the life that a generation of warmongering adults chose for her. As her father and mother, Lee-Ann van Rooi and Jason Potgieter deliver layered performances, lending great dignity to the characters. Potgieter also offers sensitive playing as Doctor Hirata, who diagnoses Sadako and takes her through her treatment. Gabriel Marchand and Asanda Rilityana make the relationships between Sarako, Masahiro and Tomiko come to life with touches of moving candour, and Pascale Neuschäfer plays her two roles, Sadako's little sister, Mitsue, and a friend that Sadako makes in the hospital, Yoshiji, most delicately. Along with fellow puppeteer Merryn Carver, what is most impressive about this company is their sense of ensemble, which knits together their individually impressive performances into something really special. The way that they work together to bring the puppets to apparently spontaneous life is truly impressive.

Illka Louw's set design is simple, clean and immensely evocative. With a cut-out of the Genbaku Dome, one of the structures that survived the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, looming in the background, the shadow that the war casts over Sadako and her family's life is never allowed to slip into the background. Balancing that ambivalent symbol of despair and triumph is one of hope: a cut-out of a cherry tree that, by the end of the play, blossoms with paper cranes. It is a reminder of how powerful hope is, how it endures during the most tragic circumstances and how it captures the imagination of society even when the painful immediacies of the present have slipped into the past. Together with lighting by Paul Abrams, sound design by Uebu Jemasu, costumes by Hilette Stapelberg and a song by Godfrey Johnson, the set is the foundation of a powerful aural and visual environment in which the action of the SADAKO is able to play out.

One of the major points in the press materials for SADAKO deals with the questioning by 'some' of the significance of this story for contemporary young South African audiences. On a continent stricken by war, not only on a political or global level, but also in communal and domestic contexts, there certainly is validity in telling this story here. The UNESCO Constitution states that 'since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.' Crafted for young audiences but appealing to adults too, SADAKO offers a concrete step in the laying the foundations for a peaceful future.

SADAKO runs until 10 August at the Baxter Flipside. Bookings are through Computicket. For discounted block bookings, charities, corporate bookings and fundraisers please e-mail Sharon Ward on sharon.ward@uct.ac.za or Carmen Kearns on carmen.kearns@uct.ac.za.

Photo credit: Allison Foat

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