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Kafka On the Shore - A Little Mind Trip

I stepped out of my theatrical comfort zone to check out this experimental, avant garde performance.  Glad I did. 
 
Kafka on the Shore riffs on our most primal impulses and concerns - sex, violence, power, God, identity, karma, fate, loss, love, meaning, freedom, family - in a non-linear, non-literal fashion.  Do we dare face our most deep seated urges, no matter how forbidden?  How do we constructively manage them?  Talk about things that make you go "Hmmm." 
 
The play revolves around the coming of age of 15 year old Kafka, a young man in modern day Japan struggling to move forward and discover his place in the world.  Kafka is traumatized by his dysfunctional family - conflicted relationship with dad, absentee mom and sis is MIA. The show evokes time travel as sequences move between the present and Japan's World War II past, revealing the heavy price that war exacts decades after. 
 
As you watch, let go of the urge to find reason and order.  The show "plays" with reality, fantasy, our conscious life, our dream world.  The same phenomena that resist rational explanation are emotionally gripping.  The show toys with the tensions of travel and time exploring past, present, memory, getting stuck in time, traveling through time and traveling/exploring one's self.  Kafka runs away to find himself.  But can you hide from yourself?  Or was that balladeering philosopher king, Teddy Pendergrass right when he concluded that "everywhere you go, there you are"?
 
On his trip, Kafka is joined by, to say the least, an intriguing and unique cast of characters.  Kafka's alter ego, Crow, will be a familiar sight to those who caught "Superior Donuts" at Steppenwolf earlier this season.  The shore itself is a character representing the border between the play's divisions and tensions.
 
I enjoyed the play visually.  A sparse set.  Effective lighting and emotional use of music.
 
Up for a little mind trippin'?  Head to the northside.

 -Lauren
Comments?  E-mail me at: Lauren@so-LAZE.com

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Kafka on the Shore continues through November 16, 2008 at Steppenwolf Theatre.