The creators of this stage production have taken Makoto Shinkai’s delicate, subtle 46-minute Japanese anime about two lonely people and turned it into something galumphingly obvious and more than twice as long. Though moments of beauty peep through, Alexandra Rutter’s production doesn’t really work as a tribute to the 2013 film or as a piece of theatre in its own right.
It’s a story of wounded souls, poetry and unrequited love, with a side order of foot fetishism. Teenage student Takao (Hiroki Berrecloth) and twentysomething teacher Yukari (Aki Nakagawa) find themselves sheltering from the summer rains most mornings in a public Tokyo garden. He’s skipping school to design shoes: she’s blotting out a professional scandal with beer and chocolate. He gets to measure her feet before he learns her name.
