Funny girl takes on stiff upper lip

Rachel Haliburton10 April 2012

Those who practise rhyming slang may have cynical comments to make about a woman who fancies a duck, but an altogether more subtle humour is on offer in this beguiling show. Kazuko Hohki, founder of Japanese band the Frank Chickens, uses her surreal love story to point up some of the absurd clichés dogging the way in which the British and the Japanese view each other.

Hohki's curious blend of storytelling and tongue-in-cheek techno-trickery has long been a favoured dish on the BAC's menu. Last year, she presented an eclectic, electronically-aided meditation on her mother's death; now, she takes the audience on a mysteriously magical tour through icons of stiff-upper-lip Britishness, ranging from Brief Encounter to a cup of tea.

A violinist sits to one side of the performing area, while on the other side a large screen displays filmed animated sequences. As a rocket takes off on the screen, accompanied by an upward glissando on the violin, Hohki steps centre-stage in her designer black suit and starts to tell a traditional Japanese tale about a man who falls in love with a crane (the bird, please note, not the construction-site mechanism).

The ensuing narrative is spiced up by Hohki's deliciously ironic humour. She herself poses as a naive Japanese office-girl who dreams of an English lifestyle constituting endless cups of tea and discussions about Shakespeare. Shortly after, she develops unrequited desires for a duck and an English anthropologist who comes to her doorstep, and an encounter that starts with a questionnaire leads to a marriage proposal.

Hohki uses Japanese paper theatre techniques, and other faux-naive animations for this understated performance interspersed with songs about love, clothes, and space creatures. Idiosyncratic, and gently innovative, this is a delightful trip to an imaginative universe where - among other attributes - one hour feels like a mere five minutes.

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