07/08 main season

based on “honey pie” and “superfrog saves tokyo”
from the novel after the quake by haruki murakami
adapted for the stage and directed by frank galati
steppenwolf theatre company’s production
in association with la jolla playhouse
thrust stage
october 12–december 2, 2007

running time: 90 minutes, no intermission

extended through december 2

the art

Director Frank Galati won two Tony Awards for The Grapes of Wrath. Writer Haruki Murakami, author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore, earned Japan’s equivalent of the Pulitzer. Now the two talents collide in after the quake, a simple, gentle tale of life in the wake of earth-shaking disaster. A timid man woos an old flame, enchanting her anxious daughter with whimsical bedtime stories of a six foot frog’s fight to save Tokyo. In this poignant new play, we see that a storyteller can’t dispel the world’s woes, but he can teach a child—and himself—how to face fear.

the artists

Frank Galati is renowned for transforming literary works into transcendent theatre. He won two Tony Awards—as adapter and director—for The Grapes of Wrath. He also directed the Broadway hit Ragtime, which turned E.L. Doctorow’s novel into a magical musical, and netted an Oscar nomination for his screenplay to Anne Tyler’s Accidental Tourist. This spring, he brings The Pirate Queen to Broadway.

Haruki Murakami became Japan’s most celebrated contemporary author after an epiphany at a baseball game convinced him he could write novels. His 13 award-winning books include Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The two stories presented on our stage appeared in The New Yorker and GQ.

the buzz

HIGHEST RATING! “Galati skillfully interweaves two evocative short stories and a haunting cello-and-koto score in a visually stunning, slyly comic and subtly affecting, multifaceted 80-minute reflection on fear, love, loneliness and the transformative powers of art.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“an elegant, economic, gently hypnotic piece of theater…all the elements reflect and satisfy a yearning for solace and safety.”—New York Times

“Beautifully introspective…A mysteriously poetic evening of theater that unlocks the secrets of metamorphosis…Exquisitely chiseled performances give the play a sense of delicacy that grounds Murakami’s leaps into the fantastical…The quirky beauty of Murakami’s fantasy reverberates in the mind like a half-remembered dream.”—San Jose Mercury News

“Best of all is the live music performed by Jason McDermott on cello and Jeff Wichmann on koto (a stringed instrument that, like the accordion does for Paris, immediately conjures Japan). In addition to the original compositions by Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman, the duo also manages to work in the Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘You Light Up My Life.’”—Oakland Tribune

“It’s an incredible gift wrapped in a very unusual package…a seductive theatrical invitation into the slightly off-kilter, pop-culture-rich world of Japanese author Haruki Murakami…surreal at times, quite fanciful and filled with sharp turns and dangerous curves…Galati’s direction is crisp and filled with wonderful surprises…The acting in the piece is charmingly open and inviting—and often a bit tongue-in-cheek.”—Contra Costa Times

“Murakami’s small gems caught the imagination of adapter-director Frank Galati, who has gracefully intertwined them into a mesmerizing 100-minute theater piece filled with plenty of humor and whimsy…a treatise on how we can travel with our imaginations to new, vibrant territory”—Chicago Sun-Times

“after the quake, an exquisite dramatization of two short stories by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, may not register particularly high on the theatrical Richter scale, but the emotional aftershocks it carries are profound and lingering. Delicately adapted and directed by Frank Galati, this production brings to life a fictional world in which reality blurs with dreams, and the meaning of momentous public events plays out privately, in hidden chambers of characters’ innermost selves…Without question one of the more elegant dramatizations of literary material to come around in a while—shimmering proof that adaptation doesn’t have to mean diminution.”—Los Angeles Times

the dates

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