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Together, the five-headed Ogawa-self leads us on a stone-skipping path through the roughest patches of a life.
First, though, the actors get to be themselves.
Ogawas mode forThe Nosebleedis at first almost chatty.
Two of the Ogawas act out a scene fromThe Bachelorettethat brings up issues of interracial dating and family estrangement.
Theres something glancing about these vignettes theyre handled quickly and laughingly.
Even the audience is called in to help: Many hands make light the load.
When the lights go down, she looks up.
Oh, hey, Im the playwright, she says.
A little ripple of laughter moves through the tiny audience.
Werent expecting that, were you?
Has she been fibbing all along?
If the last 30,000 years of human development have taught you nothing else, its taught you that.
As the show proceeds, Sobler deliberately reveals the weakness of her own project.
Sobler is writing about the failure of good intentions, most compellingly her own.
Those 2016 scenes, though, ratchet tight that loose mood.
Still, is that really so bad?
After a double bill ofHindsightandThe Nosebleed, its increasingly difficult to see this mired-in-the-old-news quality as a flaw.
Who cares if we dont find the answers in the past?
Isnt it still worth looking backward?
We have to learn somewhere how to reach out to things that arent capable of reaching back.
That particular failure will be relevant, eventually, to us all.
The Nosebleedis at the Japan Society through October 10.Hindsightis at the Paradise Factory through October 23.
