La Fin des Temps

I have recently become a hard-boiled fan of Haruki Murakami, the prolific, widely loved Japanese writer of impossible-to-define fiction that mixes genres as if they were ingredients for the craziest salad you ever tasted. I had just finished reading the wonderfully strange End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland (published in 1985) when I discovered that Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet was putting on French choreographer Philippe Decouflé’s production of La Fin des Temps, the first and only stage adaptation of the novel, originally created in Japan and produced there with Japanese performers in January of this year. Decouflé calls it a “musical comedy with no songs,” but it might better be described as a musical dystopia with no songs, given the darkness of the Japanese author’s story

Murakami has a boundless imagination backed up by great factual knowledge and deep research. This considerable attention to detail must be what makes his impossibly strange situations so fascinating, in much the same way that Kafka’s Metamorphosis makes sense within the world he created in the novella. (Not incidentally, Murakami won the Franz Kafka Prize in 2006.)

I was extremely curious to see how this long novel could possibly be made into a stage play and rather frightened that seeing it would somehow alter my perception of the novel. On the bright side, I thought it might give me more insight into it. I won’t go into detail about the plot, which involves everything from a good-guy/bad-guy tech war to unicorns (and their skulls) living in an inescapable town protected by high walls.

Decouflé, well known in France as the choreographer of the hugely successful opening ceremony for the French bicentennial celebrations in 1989 and as the founder and artistic director of the Compagnie DCA in Saint Denis, was not only the choreographer, but also the artistic director of La Fin des Temps. He deserves kudos for the choices of artful sets, original costumes and beautifully choreographed dance scenes that intersperse the action in La Fin des Temps.

He also did an amazing job of condensing the novel’s complex story, which is gradually revealed through the selection of key scenes from the book and the dialogue (in Japanese, with supertitles in English and French) between the characters.

Many in the audience on opening night at Châtelet had not read the novel and presumably were attracted to the play more by Decouflé’s reputation than Murakami’s. I believe the plot became clear as the play progressed, although a few perplexed viewers were seen to leave the theater even before the intermission. Patience is certainly required for many of Murakami’s works: in this novel, the reader is in exactly the same position as the initially puzzled spectators at the play were – the author’s intentions are revealed very slowly as you progress through the novel with its two seemingly unrelated alternating stories.

One thing that could have been problematic was the disconnect between the stunning dance scenes and acted-out scenes, but they flowed back and forth very naturally thanks to the clever staging and scenery.

There will be five more performances of the show (through October 21). If you go as an uninitiated reader of Murakami’s works, be assured that you will be entertained and will reach a (rather oversimplified) understanding of the story by the end. If you go as a Murakami fan, you will be entertained but perhaps miss the details and digressions of the author’s writing and feel slightly put off by the literalness of the acted-out scenes.

All in all, Decouflé did a fabulous job, considering that he had to walk a tightrope between the faithful presentation of the novel’s story and the expression of his own creativity.

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