Rashomon

by Fay & Michael Kanin

 

 

 

A Connaught Theatre Company production performed at Worthing Connaught Theatre, April 1971

 

 

 

Running time: ?

1 Intermission

 

 

 

Director: Ted Craig

Design: Stuart Stanley

Costumes: Terry Brown

Lighting: Terence Caughell

  

 

 

Synopsis     Notes

 

 

 

Run sheet

 

Worthing Connaught Theatre……. 13 - 24 April 1971

 

 

Cast

 

Dudley Long....... priest

Glynn Sweet....... woodcutter

Paul Gregory....... wigmaker

Hessel Saks....... deputy

David Suchet....... bandit

Geoffrey Bateman....... husband

Judy Nunn....... wife

Joan Duan....... mother

G.F....... medium

 

 

Synopsis

 

The story takes place in Kyoto in Japan a thousand years ago at the Rashomon Gate, a police court and in a nearby forest. At that time Kyoto is the capital of Japan and the Rashomon Gate the largest entrance to the city. With the decline of Kyoto, the gate has fallen into decay and become a hideout for thieves and a dump for abandoned corpses.

 

“A priest, horrified at the cruelty and dishonesty of his decaying society, has left town to meditate in the woods. He and a woodcutter encounter a wigmaker (robbing hair from bodies) and tell him what happened the day before.

 

This much is known: The region's most diabolical outlaw, Tajomaru [the bandit], tied up a samurai and raped his wife. Later the husband was found dead with both the wife and the villain gone.

 

What is up in the air is who killed the samurai. Tajomaru is the obvious culprit, and he accepts the blame. But the wife claims she killed her husband when he looked at her contemptuously after she was raped. The husband himself, speaking through a medium, says from beyond the grave that he killed himself when his wife indicated a desire to run off with Tajomaru and leave him behind. The woodcutter obviously knows something and has yet a fourth version of things that seems to contain the most truth. The actual occurrences are different in each story, which means at least three of the four tellers are lying” - based on a review (shortened and altered a bit by the site-owner) by Eric D. Snider. This review is based on a performance from 2001 and the action and settings may differ from the 1971 production.

 

A detailed synopsis (in spite the writer claims it’s a short story plot of the play) - scroll down a bit…

 

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Notes

 

The play was inspired by the Japanese film Rashômon from 1950 directed by Akira Kurosawa, who mainly based the story on a thousand year old Japanese legend adapted in a collection of short stories by author Ryonosuke Akutagawa. The play was first produced in 1959 for the American stage with Claire Bloom and Rod Steiger in the head roles. Hollywood later adapted it for a Western film, The Outrage, from 1964 starring Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey and, once again, Claire Bloom.

 

The fights in the play were arranged by David Suchet.

 

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