This is not a show I am going to be able to fully describe here. Across almost two and a half hours, Hideki Noda’s show was a mad, brilliant and strange whirlwind of ideas and images.
Roughly, the story begins in the present day with a search for angel bones, which may hold the key to human desires. The main scientist Professor Kyuri thinks they will unlock humanity’s secrets, the warring pharmaceutical sponsors, a brother and sister pair, are interested in their market value. The fight over finding and exploiting them centres around the character ‘Help’, because he happens to have an angel bone in his right arm, which allows him to detect other angel bones and use them to unlock the full power of his brain, connecting himself to past memories. As I said, this is not a straightforward plot.
Nonetheless, key things begin to emerge. Through ‘Help’ we go back to medieval and ancient times, and the same form of power struggles over the angel bones seems to echo through the ages. In medieval times, Faust bargains with the angel Mephisto to try and understand life while Mephisto’s mythical opposite, the pied piper of Hamelin, tries to stop them both. In ancient times Queen Himiko (the same actor as Professor Kyuri) is trying to research the angels while her mother and uncle (the pharmaceutical duo from modern times) vie for power.
Through all of this a strange idea is recurrent: Angels are miraculous, but they are born ill and eventually become sprawling helpless and spider-like creatures.
As we navigate many more twists and turns a central question emerges: who deserves to live? Are the angels to be cured, exploited, killed or just understood? It is a powerful question and one made all the more so if you know about the 2016 incident in Japan which inspired the show, where a former care-home employee stabbed 45 residents. His motives were ableist and eugenic, and much of this strange show comes out of a need to respond to the shock of that attack.
This rollercoaster story is realised by an exceptional cast and crew. Hideki Noda’s direction – especially his magical scene transitions – is phenomenal, as are many of the performances, to name a few: Satoshi Hashimoto, Suzu Hirose, Sadawo Abe and Eri Fukatsu.
If you’ve found this review full of surprises, I promise you the show is far more bizarre. I have left out The Banana Sequence, and I haven’t broached the shows puns and comedy (‘Your daughter will excel at corporate espionage!’) Nor have I dug into the Faustian pact that runs through the show, the role of the sign language narrator, or indeed the fundamentally different nature of Japanese theatre that makes this evening such an exciting challenge to a British audience. All I can say is that there will be nothing else like this in London for some time and that you should absolutely see it, even though it might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
As the director himself notes, ‘For some, the play might feel excessive; for others, it might bring them to deeply reflect on a past experience’. And, at the end of the day, if you are trying to provide a serious answer to the question ‘what is the nature of life?” That answer probably needs to be at least this weird.
-320° Fruns until 11th July 2026 and tickets can be found at https://www.sadlerswells.com/.
Reviewer: Ralph Jeffreys
Reviewed: 2nd July 2026
North West End UK Rating:
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