[Namsan Stroll] "Life Is Neither Something to Be Greatly Angered by nor Greatly Delighted by"

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At the end of January, when the cold was particularly harsh, I had the opportunity to visit Tokyo, Japan for a few days. Whenever I get the chance, I try to experience the deeply rooted history of theater firsthand by watching traditional plays from various Asian countries. This year, however, my schedule did not align with any traditional performances, so I ended up seeing a piece of contemporary Japanese theater instead. The work I chose, on the recommendation of local producers, was "The Good Doctor," directed by Naito Yuko, one of Japan's leading contemporary playwrights and directors. In Korea, her representative play "Katabui, 1972" was introduced in March 2023 in the form of a staged reading at the invitation of the Korea-Japan Exchange Association.

The year 1972 was when Okinawa, which had been under U.S. military administration, was returned to Japan. Through the story of a single family, Yuko delicately depicted the scars left by war and the complex inner lives of people on the eve of the reversion.

The performance I saw this time was "The Good Doctor," originally by Anton Chekhov and adapted by Neil Simon. The cast included Issey Ogata, Ando Tamae, Fukuda Yuta, Komukai Naru, and Matsuo Takashi. It was staged at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre West Theatre from January 23 to February 2, 2026.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, designed by the master Japanese architect Ashihara Yoshinobu and opened in 1990, is often referred to as the home of Japanese theater. Four to five theaters with different configurations were welcoming audiences every day with a wide range of repertoires. In the Ring Theatre in the park in front of the complex, a broad spectrum of programs ranging from dance competitions by amateur troupes to experimental street theater was taking place, effectively lowering the threshold of access to the theater. Among them, the West Theatre, which seats around 200 people, has a gently sloped continental-style auditorium, and overall it offered a high level of immersion in the proscenium stage.

On the stage for this production, aside from a small table and chair belonging to the writer that remained on stage throughout, most of the space was left empty, with only a few chairs and temporary set pieces sparsely arranged. This bare stage was efficiently transformed in accordance with the flow of the performance, serving as the background for each scene.

The production, in which an elderly actor playing an aging writer opens and leads the play, unfolded with a far more understated rhythm compared with many of the recent works that have made their presence felt in our theater scene. Despite the high ticket price of 10,000 yen for all seats, the house was full, and even during the short intermission, audience members were leafing through Chekhov's original text, deeply absorbed in the performance.

When the final scene flowed by like water, a quiet yet profound sense of aesthetic satisfaction washed over me. Watching the five actors, who appeared to range in age from their twenties to their sixties, fully employ both body and voice to realize their respective roles under taut tension, while matching each other's timing with meticulous precision, reminded me once again that theater is, in the end, an art of the actor.

The audience, who had watched the performance from seats in the same price range on an equal footing, expressed their respect for the work not with adulation for a single star, but with applause that was neither excessive nor lacking for the entire company. The composed demeanor of Japanese audiences, often contrasted with the passionate audience culture in Korea, is a point that is frequently mentioned.

At a popular singer's concert, such a reaction might be considered somewhat disappointing, but as a spectator who had just witnessed the diverse emotions wrought from the moments of life and the unexpected outcomes born of fleetingly misaligned gazes, it instead felt like the best possible response.

Perhaps the same could be said of Anton Chekhov's insights into life, left to us more than 100 years ago. Life may be something in which there is nothing to be greatly enraged about, nothing to be greatly overjoyed about, and perhaps nothing to be greatly disappointed about either.

Lee Hwa-won (President of the Korean Association of Theatre Critics, Director of the Center for Borderless Arts)

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