Sputnik sweetheart: a brilliant yet maddening haruki murakami adaptation

Marianka Swain 31 October 2023 1:30pm GMT What’s the difference between a sign and a symbol? That’s the sort of musing that characterises Haruki Murakami’s 1999 novel, and which could easily

become clunky when transferred to stage dialogue. So, it’s to the credit of adaptor Bryony Lavery and director Melly Still that their new version of Sputnik Sweetheart is such a

full-blooded, gorgeously expressive production. It’s just a shame that Murakami’s elliptical plotting leaves this drama lost in space. The title refers to a life-changing romance. Narrator

K, a schoolteacher, is in love with Sumire, a young aspiring novelist who worships Kerouac and lives in Tokyo’s hipster Kichijoji district (“Think Dalston in the 90s,” K quips to this east

London audience). Sumire doesn’t understand sexual attraction until she meets Miu, a sophisticated Korean wine importer, and loses herself in the haze of desire. Sumire calls Miu her

“Sputnik sweetheart” because she reminds her of Laika the dog: isolated in her own orbit, gazing out over an infinite space. Her identity becomes subsumed into Miu’s: she works for her and

dresses like her. “Sputnik” also means fellow traveller, and she accompanies Miu to a remote Greek island. There, for barely elucidated reasons, Sumire disappears. Still’s brilliantly

inventive staging dives headfirst into the roiling passions. Emotions are writ large in swooping movement or music swelling up beneath the words – whether the piano sonatas that bond the two

women, or Sixpence None the Richer’s yearning song Kiss Me. It’s a lovely match for the poetic language: when Sumire meets Miu, all her senses are heightened, and she can hear the bubbles

in her beer “like the groans of a robber hiding out in a cave”. The production also effectively incorporates animated illustrations. K once described his method for staying attentive to a

lover: picturing a cucumber in a fridge. Sonoko Obuchi’s playful video projections keep riffing on that – from two loved-up cucumbers dancing together to a frustrated cucumber exploding.

Shizuka Hariu’s design revolves around the glowing phone box from which Sumire calls K in the middle of the night. It becomes a versatile prop, whether a pane of glass separating people, or

a more mystical Tardis-like vehicle. As Sumire describes her fascination with Miu to K, she wraps the phone cord around all three of them – a tangled, unrequited love triangle. Millicent

Wong is a force of nature as Sumire: fierce, uncompromising, simultaneously dazzled and terrified by the strength of her feelings for someone else. Naruto Komatsu is an interestingly

conflicted K, and Natsumi Kuroda is excellent as the polished Miu, particularly when she reveals the past trauma that redefined her. The performances are so strong that it’s maddening when

the plot takes a late serve from romance and burgeoning detective story into cryptic magical realism, and then turns to completely new characters (losing the most compelling one, Sumire, in

the process). It would either take a more consistently surreal production to sell that, or a bolder departure from the source material to supply a satisfying dramatic resolution. As it is,

just like Laika, we’re left drifting in the darkness. ------------------------- _Until Nov 25. Tickets: 020 7503 1646; __arcolatheatre.com_