The theme of the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival is East Meets West, which explains the attention paid to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a world-premiere adaptation of the novel by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. Two Americans, Stephen Earnhart and Greg Pierce, wrote the piece; Earnhart also directed, leaning heavily on his background in film production. The Wind-Up Bird features video projection, English subtitles, wall-to-wall music, dance, puppetry and dazzling lighting effects, not to mention a series of short, cinema-like scene changes and time jumps. The million-dollar budget (much of which was provided by the U.S. Embassy in London) has obviously been put to good use; this is a grandiose production of which such high rollers as Akim Freyer and Julie Taymore would be proud.
The self-indulgence comes with a price, though. Murakami's Kafkaesque tale of a Japanese Everyman, Toru Okada (James Yaegashi), suffering a nervous breakdown which leaves him tormented by real and imaginary figures -- a fascist politician, dream police, a concentration-camp survivor, a young girl who threatens to leave him to die at the bottom of a dried-up well, etc. -- should have been powerful and moving. Unfortunately the play's humanity is overwhelmed by its production values, its feverish and over-reaching showmanship. This is one bird that simply won't fly.
