An ordinary salary-man’s life is shaken up when he returns home one evening to find an assortment of media and police on his doorstep. Ido’s (the salary man, played by Lucy Bath in drag) wife and child have been taken hostage by an escaped prisoner, Ogoro (Tim Walter), in an unusual form of revenge for his own domestic problems. With the whole nation watching, Ido refuses to play the victim and it’s an eye for an eye. Ido executes his own plan, involving Ogoro’s own wife and child.

So begins Ido’s dark journey from bland salary-man to brutal outlaw.

It’s truly the sensational neo-fantasy stuff of the tabloids. Co-writer Hideki Noda is well known in Japan for his interpretations of Kabuki, a stylised form of theatre traditionally characterised by wild-costumes, loud sword fights and the intention to shock the audience. The Bee is certainly inspired by the highly stylised and rhythmic conventions of traditional Japanese theatre, but this production draws heavily on the physical comedy and the farcical with a good slap of parody rather than on the shocking. A familiar sense of Australian irreverence shines through.

It’s an original and funny take on the media saturation and the way life’s melodramas are played out in it with stories and characters that are both stereotypical and thrilling at the same time. There’s the ghoulish media feeding frenzy, a salivating shuffling pack of white-masked journos and straight-shooting noir-inspired detective, Dodoyama (John Pollitt). Negotiations begin with detective Dodoyama calling Ido, to tell him to “turn on the TV”.

The timing and control of the play is highly polished and the staging is innovative, but a repetitive element plagued the play, especially through the later stages. Some of the comedy overstretched. There’s the grating and tiresome reliance on the Jap-lish clichés of Ogoro’s wife (Simon Corfield also in drag), the ultimate overblown male fantasy, demure housewife by day, professional stripper by night all in a maid’s uniform. Ido’s unhinged monkey/puppet dances, while symbolic and refreshingly physical and surprising at first, were also repeated unnecessarily.

But that turns out to be a mere quibble. The Bee ultimately succeeds in its goal in being a fun night out.

Darlinghurst Theatre, 19 Greenknowe Ave Potts Point, until 15 December 2007.

Written by: Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan
Directed by: Sarah Enright