Man, I had the craziest hallucination last night. Thing is, about 2,000 other people had it, too, and to give due credit, it wasn’t really my hallucination. It was Yukio Ninagawa’s. The multi-Olivier-award winning director, who picked up a knighthood from Her Majesty’s Government in 2002 for his bold reinterpretations of the likes of Twelfth Night and Medea (making him, um, Sir Yukio, we guess), has brought his Shintoku-Maru to the Kennedy Center for a brief run as part of the Japan! Culture + Hyperculture festival.

Adapted from an ancient Japanese noh play, Shintoku-Maru seems to incorporate bits of most of the Greek tragedies you kind of remember, but most obviously Oedipus Rex, its mommy-lust reworked into the marginally less gross stepmommy-lust. (The eye-gouging, you will be relieved to hear, remains intact.)

Aside from these familiar elements, much of the story here would likely be impenetrable even if weren’t performed entirely in Japanese without projected subtitles, which it is. Mercifully, the program contains a detailed synopsis. And if that isn’t enough help, the performance is prefaced by an audio recording of Hans Gruber himself, actor Alan Rickman, reading the lengthy plot summary aloud. Bizarre but awesome, rather like the 85 minutes that follow.

Photos courtesy of the Kennedy Center