Good Bye
The Coronet Theatre, London

LOOSELY based on an uncompleted 1948 work by renowned Japanese novelist Osamu Dazai, the story concerns a disillusioned man meeting up with friends and former lovers to say goodbye and plan his own death. As the evening descends into drunkenness, the question of what it is to be Japanese predominates. For a crushed, post-war society with a reliance on traditional culture and values, the forces of globalisation are a brutal severance from the past and a society that clearly shaped personal identity.

Dazai never completed the novel, committing suicide alongside his latest lover, but the play is more than a reworking of the existing 39 pages. Elements from his classic work of fiction No Longer Human, whose semi-autobiographical narrator deals with themes of suicide, social alienation and depression, are also present in what becomes a paean to the author and his work.

One of Japan’s leading experimental theatre companies Chiten, backed by the rock band Kukangendai, create an immersive experience that is more like being in a throbbing bar than a typical theatre performance with snippets of surtitled conversation being snatched and isolated from a barrage of sound.