Sputnik Sweetheart – Arcola Theatre, London

Writer: Haruki Murakami

Adaptor: Bryony Lavery

Director: Melly Still

‘Adapting Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart is like trying to draw the moon towards you and write with it’- that is what adaptor Bryony Lavery says of a new theatrical version of the shorter, slightly lesser attended work of Haruki Murakami, Japan’s bestselling living novelist. The result in Dalston’s Arcola theatre is a hypnotic, heartbreaking rendition of the story that hurtles through space, discovering desire, unrequited love and loneliness on the way.

In a stripped-down telephone box, Sumire (Millicent Wong) talks, at all hours, on the phone. Sumire is a writer, a smoker, an avid reader and a lover of classical music. We see Sumire through the eyes of her friend, a man who is in love with her, known only as ‘K’ (Naruto Komatsu). Sumire constantly asks K the big questions, and K as a teacher, attempts to find the words to describe them to her. When Sumire falls in love with an older woman, her boss, writer’s block starts to overwhelm her. One day Sumire, on a holiday to a Greek Island, disappears, like smoke, and she and K embark on a journey across the cosmos toward, around and with each other.

Much of this Sputnik Sweetheart is utterly captivating. It’s a mesmerising collaboration between Melly Still’s direction and Shizuka Hariu’s design. The result is an intricate physical interweaving of the bodies on stage around a set that provides an excellent medium to explore the complexities of the human condition. The performers navigate over cords and spin around in telephone boxes, and their stories are told in utter, beautiful isolation; in this instance, the audience, too, is slotted into their universe which is hurtling through space. Animations by Sonoko Obuchi are projected onto the walls to accompany the on-stage action, and are whimsical and powerful in equal measure, whether it is the libido-killing refrigerated cucumbers or Laika the dog on Sputnik II hurtling through space.

Bryony Lavery’s adaptation only adds to this spirit, fulfilling the promise to write with the moon in mind. But at 80 minutes the performance has significant dips in energy, and some of the beauty is lost as the audience becomes fatigued by the pacing and plot. In these moments the dialogue feels stunted, and the audience is taken out of the universe. Perhaps this is a by-product of trying to convey a book by a writer from whom meanings can be endlessly drawn out.

Although taking a moment to warm into the role, Millicent Wong’s Sumire is fiercely intelligent and infuriatingly naive. The unrequited yearning of Naruto Komatsu’s K is subtle and powerful, the mere act of standing and witnessing Sumire, even if it is in his own imagination, is a heart-rending watch. Wong and Komatsu work best when performing together, and the results are excellent. The same can be said for Sumire and Natsumi Kuroda as Miu, who present electrifying tension, especially when the dialogue stops and they simply move in the space together.

It’s a surprising and in-depth adaptation of a layered novel that builds on complex questions about perspective, a notion Murakami deals with profoundly. At one moment, in a particularly early 2000s way, lesbianism is reported in a newspaper to be an adaptation of a bone in the ear that masculinises the owner. K here acknowledges his own masculinisation of the plot that we see through his eyes. Therefore, are we simply seeing K’s fantasy of Sumire and Miu? When we see Sumire embodied by an actor on stage, however, how does that change?

Arcola’s partnership with the Japan Foundation offers a heart-breaking journey across the cosmos that invokes our understanding of loneliness, desire and society. In short, Sputnik Sweetheart is an absorbing watch.

Runs till 25 November 2023