20th Play - Sayonara Tokyo by R.W. Schneider

Summary: "Playwright Jaq steers her newest project through a minefield of obstacles: the holders of underlying rights won’t let her use their properties; an eager actor jumps the gun; a naval historian asks probing questions, and a literary manager offers suggestions. Some of the biggest problems are posed by people who truly want to help. At intervals, two of her characters appear, tentatively pursuing their own drama as their creator labors over hers." (R.W. Schneider)

Loved: Okay, when I read the cast list and saw that there were two actors playing a destroyer and an aircraft carrier, I thought to myself, oh dear. But as Jaq, the playwright in the script, talks to different people about her play, her somewhat tongue-in-cheek response to a fictional (but based on a couple of real series - it’s true, wow!) online anime series called "Fleet Girls" in which the girls literally ARE the ships, something began to come alive. Jaq has researched the history of these Japanese ships from WWII in great depth, and believes their story will make a strong play. As each scene has Jaq arguing with someone new about the merits of the play, we actually start to believe them too. At first I was also worried that it would be creepy to have sexy young girls in Japanese school girl costumes playing these WWII ships, and it would! That's part of the point of Jaq's play. I loved that Jaq went so far as to go to the Naval History and Heritage Command archives. When asked if she's read an obscure Japanese admiral's report (of course she had), Jaq says: "I know what happened. I need to know how people felt when it happened. ... And the biggest question of all: I want to know why it happened." As an actor/director who LOVES research, I can only admire Jaq's tenacity and the real and voluminous effort she has put into the creation of this play. There's even a great dig at the Commander (and by extension all of the Armed Forces) in the piece about "Don't ask - don't tell." Nice! Jaq faces many challenges to getting her play produced, including copyright issues with the anime, a music company exec who doesn't understand why Jaq wants to license "I Will Survive" for the play when the ships don't ("You need a song that says ‘I Will Submerge’”), and the theatre company that wants the play shorter and sexier but is concerned about scenes where the women playing the ships "launch aircraft and fire torpedoes on stage." I do love that Jaq defends her stage directions to the theatre company's literary manager by explaining that despite the fact that she doesn’t have a vision on how to stage them, Ariane Mnouchkine would. The hapless literary manager doesn’t get it, but it’s a lovely theatre Easter egg for those of us who do. There are so many moments of smart writing like this in the play - the playwright clearly has an extensive knowledge of both theatre and WWII Japanese naval history. The history geek in me really enjoyed all that. Also, it makes for smart playwriting.

What I didn’t Love: One of the early scenes we see is with Jaq and Cora, who is an "actress" who wants a role as a ship in the play. Cora has actually done a lot of physical and imaginative work to find the character of the ship, but the scene is written as funny. That’s fine, and admittedly necessary in a comedy, but the scene reads as really making fun of the actor. So, perhaps I'm just sensitive on this subject, but Cora has clearly done a lot of actor work, both physical and imaginative, which should be commended! I just didn't like the mocking tone of the scene. If that's not the writer's intention, that should probably be communicated in the script. Of course the work we actors do is funny to laypeople, but maybe there can be some appreciation of the actor’s initiative and creativity in addition to the weirdness of it. One challenge of this play is that a lot of the scenes are just talk - Jaq talking to each person. The juxtaposing of that with the physical moments of the ships will help, but keeping those scenes alive might be a challenge. Also, there are a couple of scenes between the two ships where one of them, Akagi, is asking another ship, Fubuki, to sink her. Historically Akagi does have to sink, and her reasoning to Fubuki in the play is that "I will be disgraced if the enemy finds me like this." However, Fubuki does not want to do this, and I couldn’t blame her. I can't decide whether I like or dislike these scenes. I think they have the capacity to be amazing or terrible, frankly - I mean the women are playing an AIRCRAFT AND A DESTROYER! I will also say that my sensitive side was very upset at Akagi's command to Fuguki to sink her and quite upset by it. This is not a criticism, just something that upset me. Anytime you anthropomorphize something, then talk about killing it, I'm going to be bothered - that's just me. But the only thing that I found truly problematic with this play is the ending. *** SPOILER *** I don't mind Jaq being frustrated with the multitude of problems she is facing with her play, and I even really liked that the two women playing the ships break character and stop their scene to try to help her out in this moment. But when they encourage her to "put it (the play) out of its misery," and she DOES, I was a bit devastated. Then all of a sudden it was the end of the whole play, and my first instinct was fury. What?!! … Okay, it's clever, and even tracks with some of the rest of the play - self-sacrifice in the face of mediocrity - but WE WEREN'T READY FOR THAT YET!!! Maybe this ending could work with some more scenes (this is another short play!) where the audience was actually ready to just be done with this unusual but quirky play, but it definitely felt premature. I beg the playwright to write more before ... giving up on it.

Overall: The premise of this play sounds terrible - which is part of the point, maybe? Jaq spends a lot of time explaining, and actually convincing us (well, she convinced me) why it's not. Jaq is super-intelligent and has done so much research and put so much work into this play, and I came to be cheering for her to succeed with it. There are a lot of talky scenes interspersed with scenes of two women portraying the Japanese WWII battleships, which could be terrible and campy, or which could be quite interesting. This play is truly a love song to the details of very specific research, which to me was what sold its unusual concept. Overall, I really enjoyed this play until it ended way too soon for my taste, and I just can't get past that. If Jaq has to give up the play to live her life, I respect that. But don't you think someone that has spent so much time studying and who has an enormous depth of respect for these WWII combatant ships would have a little more fight in her?

Here’s a link to Google Sheets with more info about the play: Play a Day Sheet