Shakespeare is set to flower in the east

Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa wants animalistic acting; but the RSC's Sir Nigel Hawthorne is having trouble standing up. Linda Onoki reports on the pleasures and the pitfalls of bringing 'King Lear' to Japan

To many Japanese, Shakespeare is little more than a name half-remembered from schooldays. But that country's maverick director, Yukio Ninagawa, is planning to change all that. To his compatriots, he is promising a shining revelation: "Shakespeare as it has never been seen before"; to the British, a "beautiful flowering of Shakespeare's seed from the East."

On Wednesday, the eve of the equinox, Ninagawa's exotic production of King Learopens in Japan, with Sir Nigel Hawthorne in the leading role. In October, it will transfer to London's Barbican theatre and then the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford on Avon. But there are obstacles ahead: despite many years' experience directing Shakespeare in Japanese, Ninagawa is directing actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company in a language he does not speak.

If English is a hurdle for the director, it is a mountainous barrier for the audience in Japan. When Japanese tourists have been baffled by the prose of Phantom of the Opera, will Shakespeare's searing poetry fall on deaf ears? In this alien tragedy of an ageing King and his "pelican daughters", will Japanese audiences find a universal truth?

Ninagawa is determined that on his stage they will, and not only in King Lear. Over 13 years he is directing all 37 Shakespeare dramas. It was not his idea: "I might not survive the experience!", he warns. It was the brainchild of Makoto Moroi, director of a new municipal theatre in Saitama, north of Tokyo. The first three productions of the cycle, Romeo and Juliet, 12th Night and Richard III, have been sell-outs; but they were staged in Japanese. Are there enough swots out there for 16 English performances of the bleakest tragedy?

Probably. The story of King Lear will be familiar from Kurosawa's samurai version in the film Ran. And as well as Ninagawa's reputation, there is the considerable appeal of seeing a lone Japanese lamb among the lions of the RSC: Hiroyuki Sanada, a popular actor, is playing the Fool. But he is more than a pretty face. Hawthorne spotted him in London playing Hamlet, and was struck with his unusual combination of "athleticism with vulnerability". At 38 he is as graceful as a swallow, and for this acrobatic performance he is keeping fit by running and "breathing energy from nature".

After diligently learning to flatten his vowels in Hollywood, he has had to sharpen them up again with a tutor from the British Council. After all, the play runs for four months in England. As always, Ninagawa plans to scale the language barrier with creative staging. Anyone who saw his recent A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in a Zen stone garden, knows that his productions are full of invention. At the rehearsal stage in Saitama there are hints of Japanese music, flowing costumes, masks and flashes of humour amid the gloom. All this reflects the vivacity of the Kabuki theatre, yet the set draws on the austere simplicity of its opposite extreme, the Noh.

On an empty stage, by the dark shadows of an ancient pine tree, King Lear's passion, agony and awakening will be thrown up in stark relief. Anyway, that's the theory. Actually, the rarefied atmosphere of the Noh stage seems a natural choice for King Lear; one of Shakespeare's most unearthly creations. Lear's slide towards the nadir, when he appeals to the heavens - "You see me here you gods, a poor old man,/ As full of grief as age, wretched in both" - and then his words to the blind Gloucester - "When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools" - could be lines from a Noh drama.

However, British audiences with occidental concentration spans need not fear. Unlike Noh, where the height of grief may be portrayed by the slow, silent raising of the hand towards the eyes of a mask, the actors of the RSC are free to express their emotions. Ninagawa says he wants "animalistic acting in an empty set." Will this work in the all-important storm scenes? Charles Lamb's horror of seeing Lear reduced to a "tottering old man with a walking stick" has given fair warning to every director for 200 years.

But Ninagawa is perfectly aware of the pits of bathos yawning at his feet, and thinks that "Sir Nigel and I have found a way". Still, he is not underestimating his responsibility: "It's like an English director coming to the Kabuki theatre and telling Kabuki stars what to do." Nor is he used to such lively debate among the troupe: "Sometimes I feel like Macbeth: everyone's my enemy."

Nevertheless he is full of praise for the cast, especially Hawthorne, whom he describes as "sparkling with imagination. Every day he has new ideas. It's exhausting." Which is exactly what Hawthorne says of him. Pulling on leather boots before the first full rehearsal of Act 1, Hawthorne recalls that four weeks earlier, "we were taken straight off the plane and thrown onto this huge stage and told to get on with it. There's no time to pussyfoot around and say 'where do you want me to stand?' Ninagawa works like an opera director; he comes to rehearsals expecting you to know the arias."

However, no one is complaining. The actors have unwonted freedom in their reading of the text, and are supported by creative Japanese staff who shuttle about like bullet trains.

With experience comes insight; Ninagawa says his first two King Lears were failures: "I was beaten by the text. But this time, I'm going to win." As for Hawthorne, at the age of 70 he is musing on the epic role ahead. "Lear is often played by a young man in his 40s, but I'm roughly the same age as King Lear was supposed to be. When you get down on your knees you know how difficult it's going to be to get up again. A younger man would have to act that; I don't."

He says King Lear demands "huge bursts of energy". But in the break in Act 3 he will be in his dressing room. "I shall have a Diet Coke and put my feet up. Shakespeare always gives you a rest, and then goes full tilt towards the end."