Crouching Bandit, Hidden Princess

Kikue Tashiro’s Sakura, The Bandit Princess begins to spin its magic even before the houselights go dark. Tucked into a corner of Theater LaB’s small stage sits Allen Nyoshin Steir. Surrounded by his simple Zenlike flutes, he bangs a slow, rhythmic call to the audience on an ancient drum. As we settle into our seats, the drumbeat becomes louder, the lights dimmer, and slowly we are transported to a far-off land where a tomboy can grow up to be beautiful princess and a mysterious lover will take an arrow in the heart for the sake of love and honor.

Based on an 11th-century samurai legend, this one-woman show from the 2001 Edinburgh Festival is fanciful, funny and even a little bit heartbreaking. The star sorcerer, Kati Kuroda, who plays all the characters, casts a powerful spell that could charm even the most curmudgeonly grown-up, reminding him how delightful story time can be.

The set is elegant and simple. Three paper scrims — blue for streams of water, red for fields of wildflowers and green for dark, lonely forests — hang from the rafters. A pair of paper fans become chopsticks or a mighty sword, and long silk ribbons become gushes of vengeful blood or waves of tears — all with a simple twist of Kuroda’s enchanted wrists. Drenched in Kuroda’s charismatic performance, these minimal surroundings make Sakura’s world tangibly real.

The story introduces us to Sakura when she is just seven years old. Orphaned long ago and raised by a loving guardian named Genta, she’s all pouty petulance when she discovers that she is not the wild, free-spirited mountain girl she thought she was. Instead, she’s a princess who must grow up and learn to use Toshimitsu, a mighty sword that will help her find her rightful place as a ruler and a warrior.

As Genta, Kuroda squats down and waddles about, showing us the tender coarseness of the character who feeds Sakura, bathes her and slays any forest beast that would grab her up for dinner. Kuroda has only to turn around again to become the foot-stomping, eye-rolling, butterfly-chasing princess-to-be.

Between each scene Kuroda becomes the story’s narrator, even stepping out of the story entirely to explain her heavily sweating brow: “As they say in Houston, I feel like a pig in a microwave.” She skips over the years, until Sakura is a 16-year-old court lady who must learn the arts of poetry, good manners and sitting still.

“It is so boring!” Sakura wails. Only her secret training in the martial arts interests the adolescent. She discovers that she can slip out of the palace if she dresses as a young man, but this plan backfires when she is recruited to kill an enemy of the court. With the help of her ancient sword, Sakura beheads the man at a state dinner. Ribbons of red blood gush from the severed head. The stylized scenes of violence throughout the production are remarkably effective, in part because there is no attempt to make them realistic. Instead, they are wonderfully theatrical, almost dancelike in the careful choreography between gesture and ribbons spinning in the air.

One of the funniest characters Kuroda creates is Prince Kai, the effete ruler who falls in love with the brave boy Sakura is pretending to be. Prince Kai brings her to his private chambers to teach her a new game: “the Equestrian Ride.” Just as he is about to mount her from behind, he discovers she’s a woman. He’s becomes even more enraged when Sakura explains her true identity as his princess cousin who’s been sent to help him rule.

“You are the daughter of a beast and a madwoman,” he sneers, for Sakura’s father was a bandit and her mother was a woman who abandoned the court to marry him. Deeply offended, the young Sakura avenges her parents’ names and escapes back into the mountains, in search of her true purpose in life.

The story may be simple, but its execution is surprisingly effective. Penny Bergman has directed Sakura with reserve, letting Kuroda’s powerful presence draw the audience in. Wearing black clothes and a black veil, Mami Kimura attends Kuroda throughout the play, handing her props, providing cups of water and wiping her brow. And Kuroda’s playful earthiness keeps all this from becoming too precious. Ancient as the samurai legend might be, Sakura, The Bandit Princess reminds that the power of any story lies in the telling.