Our Cosmic Dust by Michinari Ozawa translated by Susan Momoki Hingley. Park 200, Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, London N4 until 05 July 2025, 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

Photo Credit: Pamela Raith.

Our Cosmic Dust by Michinari Ozawa translated by Susan Momoki Hingley. Park 200, Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, London N4 until 05 July 2025,

4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“Amazing stars.”

This award winning play about how Shotaro, a small boy, copes with the death of his father directed by the author is stunningly staged by the author, skillfully performed by the entire cast, especially by Hiroki Berrocloth, who manupulates the puppet Shotaro but it is about ten minutes too long. After an hour of watching one gets restive. The looking at one's watch moment arrives. The fact is the point if tgus story about surviving grief has been made, the endless moving about of small chairs pulled out of a hole in the middle of the stage by the cast has become tedious, and the final message as it starts to sink in proves actually pretty trite. People die. People do not go to heaven up there in the stars and thinking one can find a lost one there is pointless. There is no way we are ever going to get to the stars which are too far away and the best one can hope for is to end up fertilising the planet on which we live and accept that this is what has happened to the lost loved ones. The play may all seem far  more meaningful to a Japanese audience. Indeed it must have done for it won Outstanding Theatrical Production in the 2024 Yomiuri Theatre Awards with Ozawa being named Outstanding Director. But there are those visuals projected on to the vast back wall of the theatre which are endle amazing to watch and which do illustrate the encounters between Shotaro and Orion, the director of the planetarium which we are apparently sitting. The little boy has gone to look for his dead father followed by his mother Yoko and there they meet other people also grieving for a loss of a loved one – one of which is a dog called Figaro. The subject is how does one cope with grief. Casting a puppet as Shotaro  could have misfired because puppets can by anything but endearing, however Berrocloth manages  to make him seem real so that one does care about how he will survive  his loss. But what makes the evening something out of the ordinary are those amazing visuals in front of which the cast perform.

Cast

Hiroki Berrecloth – Shotaro.

Nina Bowers – Tara.

Ian Hallard – Orion.

Millie Hikasa – Yoko.

Hari Mackinnon – Alastair.

Creatives

Director &Set Designer – Michinari Osawa.

Puppet Director & Designer – Mikavka Teodoro.

Video Designer – Eika Shimbo.

Co-set Designer & Costume Designer -Ceci Calf.

Lighting Designer – Jodie Underwood.

Sound Designer – Tomohiro Kaburagi.

Composer – Orenograffiti.