Theatre review: Wind in the Pines

ONE of the more culturally entrenched Japanese Noh plays, Wind In The Pines is a moving depiction of suffering written by Kanami in the 14th century. Contracted here to 45 minutes as part of the Corona Classic Cuts season at Oran Mor, this adaptation by Paddy Cunneen retains an absorbing visual and spiritual spell, its ethereal, elemental beauty shading even the play's exotic validation of stoicism.

A wandering monk (George Drennan) on a pilgrimage to the west of Japan arrives at the Bay of Suma, where he is acquainted with the suffering of Pine Wind and Autumn Rain (Pola Anton and Pauline Knowles), saltworkers and sisters who died pining for the loss of the poet Yukihira. Employing mask, music and heavily stylised physical movement there's an understated ebb and flow to the narrative that pulls you in, even as aspects of the sisters' fate feel coolly distancing – the Buddhist notion of emotional attachment being a mortal sin, for example.

Personally, I wanted to understand the women's relationship with each other better, the strengths of their respective devotions and the differences in their personalities – the piece subtly flits between treating them as distinct and as a single entity.

Regardless, there's a simplistic purity to the performance, framed by Clive Bell's hypnotic score, which he delivers on a variety of traditional instruments.

Moreover, the surface appearances of humility and self-sacrifice by the principals rarely obscure the emotional torrents raging beneath, culminating in the sisters' descent into a wild yet choreographed madness.