Time's Journey Through a Room
About the show
Set one year after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, PlayCo's drama is a portrait of how we move forward from life-changing events. More…
Part love story and part ghost story, 'Time’s Journey Through a Room' observes how hope can spring up alongside sadness and fear, and change can be realized if we are awake to the present moment.
"With its glacial pace, crypticness and arresting production design, Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada’s 'Time’s Journey Through a Room' at first seems more suited to a museum than a theater. However, halfway through its one hour running time it metamorphosizes into a majestic rumination on the persistence of memory, love and death...Mr. Okada’s dialogue as translated by Aya Ogawa is spare, poetic and perfectly complements his metaphysical scenario. " Full Review
"'Time's Journey Through a Room' is Toshiki Okada's multi-layered exploration of how we process trauma and loss...If you try to understand 'Time's Journey' as a traditional relationship drama, you might become disappointed by the lack of action...Although 'Time's Journey' is in many ways uniquely Japanese, it is also astutely relevant to anyone who has experienced loss, grief, and trauma...The play may well linger in your mind long after time has supposedly moved on." Full Review
"'Time’s Journey' is a response to the Fukushima disaster, and the striking sensory evocation that begins the performance ensures that we make the connection. The translation, by Aya Ogawa, helps with that, too; fluid as it is, it does not feel like American speech...Told in fragments that come together gradually, it is a chronicle of healing, with all its pain and awkward humor and halting steps." Full Review
"The glacially paced 'Time’s Journey' is challenging...Our heartbeats and our thoughts slow. In this down-tempo mode, 'Time’s Journey' feels like a marathon: Time staggers, creeps, crawls through the room. Your thoughts may be inclined to flutter out of the box that Okada and Rothenberg have made for them, but that’s the task the play asks us to face. Marshal your mind. Look at the difficult thing." Full Review
"A spare, meticulous, and sometimes frustratingly oblique study of human interaction in disaster’s wake...With painstaking precision, Okada shuffles and rearranges his three protagonists to scramble our emotional and narrative coordinates...Deliberately uncomfortable pacing is part of Okada’s exacting design, meant to jolt spectators out of our assumptions about the passage of time..Effective, as far as it goes but it also feels less generously constructed than some of Okada’s previous works." Full Review
"Sounds like a shudderingly abstract story idea, until you experience Toshiki Okada’s play as directed by Dan Rothenberg...Under Rothenberg’s laser-pointed direction and the equally precise performances of the very fine trio of actors, time is seen and felt as a continuum, in real time...PlayCo’s production is preceded by an enigmatic prologue...A fitting abstraction of this journey of time through the space of a room and the higher spheres yet of emotion, imagination and memory." Full Review
"Events unfold at a pace that may confound many Americans in the audience...'Time's Journey Through a Room' is never dull, yet it never deeply engages. And once again, one is left wondering if, in its detachment -- not to mention its allusion to still-recent traumatic events -- the play may have much more to say to a homegrown audience...I see I haven't mentioned the production's opening sequence...It is striking, if strangely remote; you can say the same about 'Time's Journey Through a Room.'" Full Review
"Evocative, well-crafted, but externally undramatic…Numbingly slow, emotionally controlled, narratively slight, and emphasizing a state of mind more than a dramatic action…Many…are likely to find its tortoise-like pacing, lack of action, and inner-directed expressivity stultifying. Others will be moved by the throbbing trauma present beneath the surface's seeming placidity…The company, each member of which is a native-born Japanese…performs in a cool, emotionally detached way." Full Review
See it if you want to see contemporary Japanese writing in an exquisite production. An authentic representation of young adults dealing with grief.
Don't see it if You have problem with accents. You have an exceptionally short attention span. You need everything spelled out for you in drama.
See it if Sparse and poetic...see beyond your eyes. Brief and momentous,
Don't see it if Not ready to deal with loss and healing.
See it if It is a beautifully spare production,a subtle yet powerful portrayal of love, and grief in the aftermath of tragedy. Excellent design
Don't see it if you don't have patience for a slow-paced, dream-like play. If you don't enjoy abstract or minimalist theater.
See it if A play set across time, we see memory and the present overlap. Likely the most formally interesting show running in NY now.
Don't see it if Some of the dialogue is banal on purpose, other times it is just banal. Fairly staid gender views. Slow pace (tho often to solid effect).
See it if You enjoy small plays about big subjects, like survival after trauma and happiness, super sets and super choreography, though no dancing.
Don't see it if Actors are Japanese with occasional hard-to-grasp lines.
See it if You appreciate the subtlety of language and the disconnect of speaking in a translated dialogue which reinforces the Feeling of loss
Don't see it if You want an easy light evening of theater This is all about the subtitles
See it if You like thought provoking meditative plays. This play is as much about the conversation after, as it is about the actual show.
Don't see it if You like fast plays. It's slow, and when one of the characters instructed the audience to close our eyes I thought Is this a good idea?
See it if ceremonial events interests you. The slow precise speech and long posed postures suggests ritual.
Don't see it if If you are looking for a traditional theatrical experience.
See it if You want to see an inventively done play that is extremely deliberate.
Don't see it if You don’t like silences in plays, want a spectacle, want things to be extremely clear.
See it if Starts detached. Very slowly gets into their internal, emotional journey of coping with a dead partner and accepting a new one in.
Don't see it if Super. Slow. Talking. With. Lots. Of. Pauses. Irritate. ...You. Death of a partner is triggering. No real plot annoys you.
Also Ticket from Todaytix for $29.
See it if You appreciate works by non-United States born writers and stories.
Don't see it if You don't like shows without a clear plot.
See it if you want a Zen poem with very little action or poetry
Don't see it if you want a strong story or engaging performances
See it if You appreciate cerebral interactions
Don't see it if You like fast-paced story development
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