Under Execution, Under Jailbreak
Under Execution, Under Jailbreak (死刑執行中脱獄進行中, Shikei Shikkō-chū Datsugoku Shinkō-chū) is a play based on the one-shot of the same name, along with Dolce, and His Master,[1] both written by Hirohiko Araki.
The play starred actor Mirai Moriyama, and was directed and choreographed by Ney Hasegawa, with music provided by Chung-Ho Sai and his band bonobos. It was first performed at Tokyo's The Galaxy Theater from November 20 to 29, 2015, before going on tour in Sendai, Hiroshima, Sapporo, Toyama, and Osaka in December 2015.[2]
The stage production was recorded and released on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan on August 17, 2016.[3] WOWOW satellite television occasionally broadcasts recordings of the play on their services.[4]
Synopsis
A man who has been sentenced to death and imprisoned. However, the room he was in was too strange to be called a prison. As soon as the man begins his life there, everything in the room begins trying to execute him. While struggling to escape, the man eventually climbs onto a yacht floating in the ocean. He sees the illusion of the woman he killed, and a cat staring at the sin he committed. Is it a prison or an execution room? Can he escape from this strange world?
Summary
The Cell / Execution
The protagonist, Prisoner 27, is introduced behind bars, calmly pleading his innocence. The lights in his cell turn on, revealing a surprisingly lavish room with a bathtub, television, couch, dresser, and table; atop the table is a flask of water, the only sustenance in the room, along with an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes. As the prisoner ponders the strange hospitality of his cell, various objects begin to seemingly move on their own: the bathtub's faucet begins to drip, the television turns on without the remote being touched, and eventually the furniture itself moves. The lights cut out as the prisoner glimpses a hand reaching out from the dresser.
The prisoner sits at his provided table and chair, and smokes a cigarette from his complementary pack. He begins thinking to himself about the hypocrisy of lying about his innocence, harboring a deep hatred for liars himself. In reality, he was guilty—when his girlfriend lied about stealing money from his wallet, he smashed her head in with an ashtray 17 times. To lie to someone, in the prisoner's mind, shows a lack of respect for them; as such, he blames her for her own death. The events prior to the lights cutting out repeat themselves, revealed to be the work of an invisible presence in a mask resembling a cat's head.
Visibly shaken by the anomalies in his room, Prisoner 27 again sits and smokes a cigar. The same events begin to repeat a third time, but the lights suddenly go out when he attempts to turn the television off. The lights flicker on and off, revealing that the furniture has been completely rearranged each time. When the lights finally stop flickering, the prisoner finds himself sitting in front of the bathtub, from which a ghostly figure emerges. Numerous other ghostly figures emerge from the furniture and attack the prisoner, eventually dragging away the furniture and blanketing him. As the prisoner disappears behind them, the spirits assume the form of a cat. Briefly seeing a rocky scene, the prisoner hears a voice calling him before being abducted by a shadowy figure.
The Yacht / Water
The prisoner finds himself on a yacht in the midst of an ocean, along with a woman dressed in red. The two bond quickly. As they share a moment, one of the spirits reads a memory of another person, revealing that the woman drowned, leaving that person with only his cat for company. The woman begins playfully running from him, eventually climbing the yacht's mast before suddenly disappearing. To the prisoner's horror, she reappears wearing the cat mask as he falls and drowns in the ocean.
Prisoner 27 finds himself back in his room, with the furniture now stripped down to its frames. The same events begin to repeat themselves once more, but when turning off the bathtub faucet, the prisoner feels a hand on the back of his neck. Looking into the water, the prisoner sees a reflection of the cat's owner, who emerges from the water and separates into further reflections. The reflections attack the prisoner, forcing him to reflect them as he attempts to drink from his flask. The flask is eventually taken by the masked spirit, who the prisoner chases through the furniture until he finds himself inside the flask, where he again drowns.
The yacht reappears, now dragged by the spirit of the cat's owner with the woman's lifeless body on board. The owner remembers pleading his innocence, blaming her for stripping on the deck and causing the yacht to hit a rock. Nevertheless, he was certain at the time that a rescue team would find his yacht, and bring him drinking water. The owner then disappears as the prisoner finds himself on the yacht. The spirits of the woman and owner confront him, further refusing him his flask and drowning him again, this time by putting him in the bathtub and casting both into the sea.
The Rocks / Jailbreak
The dehydrated prisoner washes ashore near a rock formation before collapsing. Still blaming the woman for her own death, the prisoner loses consciousness. The woman paces about the shore, the spirits assuming the forms of furniture for her to use. As he stirs, the woman again calls the prisoner to her. The spirits then begin to absorb the prisoner, who regains consciousness and struggles to break free of them, unsuccessfully so.
Prisoner 27 smokes another cigarette, now encased inside a frame. He now sees a way out, through which green fields and butterflies are plainly visible. Nonetheless, he derides this promise of freedom as a lie, too familiar with the spirits' tricks to trust his own judgement. One day, he swears, he will break free. The spirits continue to toy with his frame, and succeed in drowning him once more before removing the frame to hold a mock sentencing.
The prisoner is assaulted by the spirits again and again, in the same manner each time, but repeatedly breaks free of their clutches. Even as the spirits dwindle in number, they and the prisoner repeat the struggle, over and over again, until even the woman's spirit disappears from view. In the end, Prisoner 27 is left to perform the routine by himself, forever attempting to escape his vanished enemies, trapped in a prison he has made for himself.
Cast
- Manji Edogawa
- Daisuke Omiya
- Ryoji Sasamoto
- Aiichiro Miyagawa
- Hirokazu Morikawa
Gallery
Key visual
Blu-ray cover
Blu-ray contents
Goods
