O'Neill in Japanese

This summer's prize for odd and ag onizing theatrical experiments goes to Broadway Director Harold Clurman (Bus Stop, Shot in the Dark). For six days every week since July 15, he has been directing a Japanese version of Eu gene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.

The genesis of this cultural obstacle course was a 1965 State Department project, in which Clurman took five U.S. actors to Tokyo and there staged Long Day's Journey into Night for the edification of Japanese actors and di rectors. Later, Tokyo's prestigious Kumo (Cloud) theater company mount ed a Japanese version of the play, which was so successful that it actually broke even -- a rare feat for any Japanese pro duction that is not traditional kabuki.

Encouraged by this (and more State Department money), Kumo this year invited Clurman to direct it in another O'Neill play. Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder and Arthur Miller have been successfully performed in Japan. But O'Neill especially, says Translator Koji Numazawa, "is haunting to us Japanese, with his tortuous groping for an answer to the overwhelming question of God's existence." Wiggy Look. Clurman expected formidable difficulties: his Japanese vocabulary consists of only ten words. But communication was a comparative cinch. First, he had to pry his cast loose from the stylized posturing of the kabuki influence. "The actors would play for the audience instead of for each oth er," says Clurman. "This is just the opposite from the technique of modern re alism, in which the actors are supposed to play to each other as if there were no audience at all." Kabuki also goes in for exaggerated emotions. "When a few tears were called for," Clurman explains, "I would get a torrent. When a character should be moved, he would go into hysterics. I constantly had to tell them to be natural."

The script's demand for a passionate kissing scene, for example, brought on only a fit of bashful giggles followed by a friendly peck. The actors claimed that Japanese are more inhibited in this department than Americans, but Clurman demonstrated with binoculars that this was not really so; a glance through the glasses at lovers in a Tokyo park convinced the cast that their stage kisses had been too tame. The uniformly black-haired actors wanted to wear wigs of different colors to make them look more like Americans, but Clurman vetoed the wiggy look. Only Noboru Na-kaya, in the central role of Hickey, was given a shock of red hair.

Rehearsals were slow work. Watching the action, Clurman would dictate comments to two translators ("That girl drops her handbag as though there's not a yen in it"), then pantomime the parts as he wanted them played while the notes were read in Japanese to the actors. Despite this cumbersome procedure and the actors' difficulty with naturalism, Clurman thinks that he'll have a hit when the play opens on Sept. 4.

"The cast is really sensitive to direction," says Clurman-san. "I have never seen such a compliant company. This experience has improved my effectiveness as a director."

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