Stage Play "wow no netsu" Review 2025/03/29

Performance Title: "wow no netsu"
Theater: Shinjuku Theater Tops
Theater Company/Project: Nankyoku (formerly Nankyoku Godzilla)
Written and Directed by: Hakase Konnichi
Cast: Shiori Hashi, Yugami Normal, Chihiro Wakui, Erika Kujo, Bokushin Togawa, Emu Furuta, Ruka Yuraku, Hakase Konnichi, Yushi Seyasu
Dates: 3/26–3/30 (Tokyo)
Running Time: Approx. 2 hours 15 minutes (no intermission)
Keywords: Youth, Sci-Fi, Play-within-a-play, Stage design, Heat
Personal Satisfaction: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

I attended the 7th main performance of "Nankyoku" (formerly Nankyoku Godzilla), written and directed by Hakase Konnichi, who is attracting so much attention that they could be called the most energetic young group in the small theater scene right now.
This production, "wow no netsu," is the first since "Nankyoku Godzilla" incorporated and renamed itself to "Nankyoku," and it also marks their first time performing at Shinjuku Theater Tops, part of the Honda Theater Group.
This is my fourth time seeing a "Nankyoku" performance, having previously seen "Kaikisei Q no Subete" (August 2023), "(Atarashii) Jurassic Park" (March 2024), and "Bird, Birder, Birdest" (September 2024).

The story begins with a man (Yugami Normal) performing a one-man show.
There is a CRT television, and he tries to extract an out-of-place artifact (OOPArt) from it, but the CRT TV breaks, and he fails.
A man who appears to be a director (Hakase Konnichi) then arrives.
The director is wearing a thick bench coat, and it seems they are in the freezing Antarctic.
The director says the one-man show the man was doing was so cold that even the seals are feeling the chill.
The two men had been performing such material as a comedy duo but were not selling at all, so they tell a man in a suit (Bokushin Togawa) that they want to join a talent agency.
However, the man is not from an agency but a salesman, and he tries to push a bag onto them.
He claims that if they enter this bag, even if they are cold now, they will meet warm members and be able to return.
The two men do as the salesman says and enter the bag... and so it begins.

As someone who has been watching them since "Kaikisei Q no Subete" over a year and a half ago, I could really feel the growth of the theater company, and it was a performance that made me genuinely happy that I have been watching over "Nankyoku Godzilla" all this time.
When I saw "Kaikisei Q no Subete," there were many tricky elements, such as moving the audience to different seats depending on the scene or having them bring radios to tune into specific frequencies to hear sound; while that was edgy and good in its own way, I was worried about what kind of group they would become.
However, I felt that with each performance in Tokyo, the works themselves became easier to watch and shifted in a good direction.
Of course, even while becoming more accessible, they have maintained the originality that "Nankyoku Godzilla" possesses, and I think it is good because their theater has become grounded and stable.

This work is composed of a multi-layered play-within-a-play with a meta-structure, and this structure was absolutely wonderful.
Until now, I had the impression that Hakase Konnichi's direction had strengths in the good kind of roughness typical of small theater, as well as tricky staging and stage design, and that there was still room for polish in the structure of the plays and the directorial composition, but I felt that this has been refined in a good way.
This meta-structural play-within-a-play makes sense precisely because theater is a medium that connects fiction and non-fiction.
I felt that by watching this work, we, the audience, were implicitly being told about the difficulties and struggles that "Nankyoku (formerly Nankyoku Godzilla)" has faced on its journey to this point, and that they are here now because of it.
And I think it is a moving work precisely because "Nankyoku" has become the theater company it is today in reality.
It was a very skillful use of a play-within-a-play.

And although there was no live music in this production, the directorial ability to create various scenes by utilizing the clutter of the stage design, which wasn't overly elaborate, was brilliant, and it was good that the worldview was conveyed clearly just through that.
The way they utilized the trapdoor unique to Shinjuku Theater Tops was wonderful, and the intensity of the scene reminiscent of a car was also excellent.
The selection of background music for the stage sound was also outstanding; there were scenes that felt like watching an old sci-fi movie, and others that felt like watching a modern sci-fi film like "Tenet."
The use of stage lighting was also wonderful, but above all, it was great that Hakase Konnichi incorporated a youth drama—his forte—into this work, making it emotional.

All the performers are members of the "Nankyoku" troupe, and they were all wonderful.
In particular, Shiori Hashi, who played the protagonist Wow, shone brightly.
It is a role of a special boy whose normal body temperature is 45 degrees, and her performance, which had the heat as if that were truly the case, was wonderful.
I felt that Hashi was acting with more burning intensity than in any of her past works.
And that, I was painfully reminded, is the root of theater.
Yugami Normal also played a major role in this production, and he stood out in a good way from the one-man show scene at the beginning.

I am very satisfied to have seen such a moving theatrical work at this place, which "Nankyoku" reached after continuing their theatrical activities while struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic.
For those who love small theater, this is a must-see, and for those who don't, it will surely be a valuable theatrical experience to get to know the existence of "Nankyoku," which will likely become popular in the future.

[Reason for Watching]

Because I have been watching "Nankyoku (formerly Nankyoku Godzilla)" since "Kaikisei Q no Subete" and have been supporting them for a long time. In particular, their previous performance, "Bird, Birder, Birdest" (September 2024), was very well-received and became a catalyst for the troupe to break out, so I felt they were a group I wanted to continue paying attention to.

[Story/Content] (*Contains spoilers)

Regarding the story, these are memories I gained from watching the play, so please forgive me if there are many omissions or mistakes.

Something like an electronic bulletin board displays "No. 1 Yugami Normal." A man (Yugami Normal) is doing a one-man show where he extracts an OOPArt from a CRT TV. He tries to smash the CRT TV with a stone axe. And as a result, the CRT TV breaks.
The bulletin board displays "No. 2 Hakase Konnichi." A director (Hakase Konnichi) arrives at the actor's (Yugami Normal) side wearing a thick bench coat often worn in the Antarctic. He harshly criticizes the previous one-man show, saying it was no good. He says this is the Antarctic and many seals are watching, and if he performs such a cold show, the seals will feel even colder. Then the actor starts from the part where he brandishes the stone axe. And the two start imitating seals.
The bulletin board displays "No. 3 Bokushin Togawa." In front of a man in a suit (Bokushin Togawa), the comedy duo "Nankyokuzu," Konno (Hakase Konnichi) and Noge (Yugami Normal), are pleading to be let into a talent agency, saying they perform Antarctic material like this. The man in the suit was not from a talent agency but a salesman selling bags. He starts saying that if they buy this bag, they will surely sell. He says that what is put into the bag comes out warm. He says that if the two of them enter this bag, they will be able to come out having welcomed a warm family. The two members of "Nankyokuzu" decide to enter the bag.

The bulletin board displays "No. 4 Emu Furuta." Mammoths, the Mastodons, appear. The Mastodon Grandma (Emu Furuta) is joined by her grandchild Mastodons. In the Mastodon Grandma's house, there is a painting of the two comedians being sold a bag by the salesman. The Mastodons begin lunch.
The bulletin board displays "No. 5 Chihiro Wakui." This is the office of the president of the luxury brand Gucci. The president, Eguchi (Chihiro Wakui), is talking to an advertising director about a new brand. The new brand is one inspired by the Mastodons' lunch. Eguchi opens his mouth. He says that good things are created only by stripping away elements. Everyone looks up at the starry sky.
The bulletin board displays "No. 6 Ruka Yuraku." Fire (Ruka Yuraku), along with other primitive people, is dancing while playing instruments under the starry sky. The primitive people dance happily with their instruments while circling a giant screen of the primitive era.

The bulletin board displays "No. 7 Kosuke Inoue." Joey Janela (Kosuke Inoue) enters the ring with music themed around the primitive era and begins a wrestling-like combat sport.
The bulletin board displays "No. 8 Erika Kujo." Lulubian Route (Erika Kujo) drives through the wilderness in a GOLF II. A wrestling match broadcast is playing on the radio. She drives through the vast wilderness of the American West.

The bulletin board displays "No. 9 Yushi Seyasu." The man in the greenhouse (Yushi Seyasu) was an artificial intelligence researcher. He liked hero stories and his hobby was watching hero shows on a CRT TV. Now, he is watching a movie where Lulubian Route drives through the wilderness in a GOLF II.
A reporter (Yugami Normal) arrives and tries to interview the man in the greenhouse. He explains what he is currently aiming for in his artificial intelligence research. He has hired a part-timer (Ruka Yuraku) and is conducting research with her. The part-timer arrives. They attach a machine to a teddy bear and conduct an experiment. The reporter covers the scene.

The bulletin board displays "No. 10 Shiori Hashi: wow no netsu." Wow (Shiori Hashi) was reading about the man in the greenhouse, who is serialized in "Mu" magazine, with her classmates. The students conclude that artificial intelligence, My Number, and the declining birthrate are all conspiracy theories.
Wow was a special boy whose normal body temperature was 43–45 degrees. Normal humans would die if their body temperature were that high, but only Wow had a specially high body temperature.
The classmates head to the pool for a swimming lesson. The students were competing over when they got their motorcycle licenses. At that moment, Wow accidentally falls into the pool. Then the pool starts getting hotter and hotter; not only Wow but other students enter the pool, and it becomes like a public bath. They make a huge fuss, saying this is a big deal.
When Wow gets out of the pool, he has an amazing hairstyle. Wow is examined by Mr./Ms. Miyako (Ruka Yuraku). And so, a plan to turn it into a tourist spot begins, thinking that they could make money by operating this steaming pool as a public bath.

Konichi-hakase (Dr. Konichi) appears and stops the play-within-a-play. Then, since there is no sound or lighting, they skip ahead and resume from several pages later.

The cloth covering the device at the back of the stage was removed, revealing "WOW," a public bathhouse that had become a tourist spot. Helicopters and reporters arrived there one after another.
In this way, thanks to Wow, the pool became a public bathhouse and the town became lively. Everyone relaxed by taking a bath together. Then they went on to do things like karaoke.

The play-within-a-play ends, and Dr. Konichi verbally states that from this day on, Wow returned to a normal body temperature, ending the story. With this, the rehearsal concludes. The actors busily begin eating and preparing to clean up various things. The actors talk to each other about their roles and other matters. They take a group photo, noting that this is the only time they can do so.
Suddenly, Shiori Hashi, who played Wow, asks Dr. Konichi to change the ending because she cannot accept it. Dr. Konichi says it is difficult since the actual performance starts tomorrow. However, Hashi does not give in. She asks for the ending to be set so that Wow secretly slips out of the karaoke and returns to the pool to dive in. She says she does not want it to end like this.

The stage goes dark. Hashi wakes up in bed at night. However, this place is unfamiliar to her. She then learns that she is in a hospital. Not knowing why she is sleeping in a hospital, Hashi panics and escapes.
Hashi contacts Kujo (Erika Kujo). She tells her that she woke up in a hospital and asks what is going on. Kujo says it is because Hashi became unconscious on the first day of the performance and was taken to the hospital. The performance was canceled, and the teardown was finished yesterday. She says a week has already passed since then.
Hashi meets up with Kujo at McDonald's. The two then contact Yugami Normal (Yugami Normal) to tell them that Hashi has safely regained consciousness. It seems Hashi's body temperature suddenly spiked on the day of the performance, and she was taken to the hospital. They discuss whether Wow might have possessed Hashi.
They also meet up with Yugami Normal. They talk about how when doing theater, they lose track of whether they are their real selves or their character selves. They say that by doing things like "Comedy: Interview" or "Comedy: Call Center," they turn everything in reality into a comedy, leading to the illusion that everything happening in the real world is a comedy, making it impossible to live seriously.
Kujo finds a magazine. It contains information about a ritual to permeate reality with a story. Although it is written by a mere fortune teller, they are unsure if it can be trusted. Hashi says she wants to use this method to extract what she holds dear from the deepest part of the script.

According to the magazine, it is possible to enter a story by using a car. It seems that entering a story is called retrograding, and exiting a story into reality is called progressing. Yugami says it is like the movie "Tenet." They immediately get into the car, retrograde to the deepest part of the story, and retrieve the out-of-place artifact that the solo actor was trying to take out of the CRT television. Then, they progress back to the real world. Yugami, Hashi, and Kujo struggled greatly with entering and exiting the story, but they managed to return to the original world.
However, after the three left, the man from the greenhouse jumped out of the car and disappeared somewhere.

Seyasu (Yushi Seyasu) interviews the theater troupe members as they approach the actual performance while rolling a video camera. Dr. Konichi explains the script of "The Heat of WOW" in front of everyone, talking about something difficult and abstract that no one seems to understand. After Dr. Konichi finishes speaking, the troupe members are surprised, asking if they are supposed to act this out, but they decide it is fine to just understand that there is such a hidden setting. Seyasu continues to interview each troupe member with the video camera.
Just like that, when Seyasu is left alone, he is attacked by someone wearing a black cloth. Not only Seyasu, but Kosuke Inoue and Bokushin Togawa are also attacked one after another. The identity of the one who attacked them was the man from the greenhouse.

Hashi, Kujo, Yugami, and the producer Wakui are having a theater troupe meeting. Wakui says that since the previous performance was canceled on the first day, there is no money in the troupe's savings, and they are in danger of going under. Even if they say they want to perform "The Heat of WOW" again, there are no small theaters available.
Dr. Konichi arrives. He says he has rewritten the ending of the "The Heat of WOW" script. He is confident that everyone will definitely find it interesting. However, Wakui says it is difficult because there is no budget left, and the troupe members start scuffling with each other.
The man from the greenhouse appears. Wakui is frozen. The man from the greenhouse says he came to push Wow into the Shinjuku water purification plant. By doing so, he is trying to cause "The Heat of WOW" again. A clash begins between the man from the greenhouse and the troupe members.
However, the people around them thought this was part of the play and were taking photos. They tell them to stop filming, saying this is not a play or immersive theater.

At the Shinjuku water purification plant, the man from the greenhouse and the troupe members have their final showdown. As a result, Hashi did not boil even when she jumped into the water purification plant. The men from the greenhouse are arrested by the police and retreat.
The troupe members create a play at the Shinjuku Theatre Tops, which has become a bare stage. Hashi speaks in a monologue. My normal body temperature easily exceeds 45 degrees. That is why, when the infectious disease was spreading five years ago, I was someone who was kicked out of every restaurant. However, people around me started telling me to try jumping into a pool and to build a "Wow Bathhouse." I was happy because I had never thought my normal body temperature meant so much until now. The performance ends here.

After watching the play and organizing the script again, I realized that this script has a wonderful structure. Since there are too many elements, there were parts that were not conveyed because the audience could not fully grasp the elements depicted in the script when it was translated into a performance, but I was still able to enjoy the work very much.
I am also surprised that this work is composed of multiple plays-within-a-play, and that everything from number 1 to 10 is a play-within-a-play. During the performance, there were parts with weak connections, so I was watching with a sense of wondering if that was really the case, but reading the script, I realized that everything is connected, and it felt grand. Also, the setting of using the movie "Tenet" as a parody to go back and forth between story and reality through progression and retrogression was interesting. There were also elements of the movie "Inception," which goes back and forth between reality and dreams, and I felt a Christopher Nolan-esque quality from the work.
If one were to try to create a play using only this setting, it could easily become trite, but it was wonderful as a work precisely because I could feel the necessity of it. After all, a story cannot exist without the real world. People are moved precisely because they link to the real world while watching a story. That is even more touching because of the trajectory followed by the "Nankyoku" troupe.
Because that link between the real world and the story is well utilized in the play-within-a-play, I think such sci-fi settings are accepted, and people are enthusiastic about the heat of the theater. I will touch on the details in the analysis part.

【Worldview/Staging】 (*Contains spoilers)

It was wonderful, as it felt like it had been brushed up in terms of script and staging structure while retaining the worldview as "Nankyoku." Although it shifted in a good direction and became easier to watch, it built a one-of-a-kind worldview while never losing its identity as "Nankyoku," and it was packed with the goodness of small-theater theater.
I will look at it in the order of stage sets, video, costumes, stage lighting, stage sound, and other staging.

First, about the stage sets.
In the beginning, a huge set covered with a white cloth is placed at the back of the stage. Also, something like cardboard is stacked vertically on the stage left side, and its top part acts as a screen. I remember there were no other fixed stage sets, and the set covered with a white cloth at the back of the stage might have looked like an iceberg in Antarctica at the beginning, but after Wow jumped into the pool, a rock object with a sign illuminated by "WOW" lighting equipment appeared. This huge stage set was magnificent. It was a stage set where signs were embedded in the rocks, and it was impossible to identify what it was.
As for the other stage sets, they were sets that were carried in and appeared depending on the scene. The stage set for the pool and diving board for the swimming class where Wow jumps also appeared when that scene arrived. A stage set that looked like a car was also carried in for the scene where they go back and forth between the story and reality by car.
I felt that ending with an almost bare stage in the last scene was an interesting staging choice. The last scene ends with "Nankyoku" performing as a troupe at Shinjuku Theatre Tops. We are actually watching that stage, but the last play made the boundary between the real world and the world of theater feel truly ambiguous, as if the audience was being made to retrograde and progress through this work.
Also, the use of the trapdoor unique to Shinjuku Theatre Tops was skillful. There was a scene where a comedy duo entered a bag given by a salesman in the beginning, and I felt it was skillful to express entering the bag by actually going into that trapdoor. The salesman said that if they entered this bag, they would meet a warm family, and it felt like wonderful foreshadowing that they would meet Wow and the others and become active as an interesting family = troupe (I wondered if the group photo that "Nankyoku" took after the rehearsal was the photo the salesman had). Also, the staging that reproduced the pool where Wow jumps and the Shinjuku water purification plant using the trapdoor was good.

Next, about the video.
The video is in two places: one at the beginning and one with content like a baseball scoreboard. In the one place at the beginning, the white cloth hung at the back of the stage is used as a screen, and "This story is fiction and has no relation to any real persons or organizations" is displayed. I thought again, does this mean that this work was not about the "Nankyoku" troupe? Of course, I don't think it faithfully reproduces the facts, but I couldn't help but think there might be facts that it was based on.
Also, I felt it was good that each character was displayed in a video imitating a scoreboard like "No. 1 [Name] [XX]" like a baseball player. First-time audience members might be able to remember the actors' names to some extent with this. Also, it was interesting that the multi-layered structure of the play-within-a-play in the first half was composed in a way that the number of performers gradually increased. Also, in that one play-within-a-play, it was composed of scenes centered on the troupe members who appeared for the first time, and it was good that the staging focused on everyone rather than who was the main character. It had a structure that felt like team play where everyone hits, rather than who is the lead.

Next, about the costumes.
Shiori Hashi's Wow costume was cool. It felt like a superhero outfit. Those watching might understand, but I felt something close to Yohei Isshiki's costume in the musical "Love and Justice."
Also, Yugami Normal's hairstyle was eccentric and stood out. I was drawn to the spiky hairstyle that looked like a Moyatto ball.
The costume like a fighting warrior worn by Kosuke Inoue also looked like it had high attack power and stood out.

Next, about the stage lighting.
The coolness of the stage lighting in the previous performance, "Bird, Birder, Burdest" (September 2024), was shocking, but I think that work also had very good equipment. This work was lighting within the range possible at Shinjuku Theatre Tops, but the staging such as how the lighting was applied and the color tones was truly magnificent.
For example, the scene between the actor played by Yugami and Dr. Konichi played by the director at the beginning was a scene in Antarctica, and it was wonderful because it felt like the freezing cold was well shaped by the stage lighting. The staging that made the audience feel that the actors on stage were indeed cold by applying bluish-white cold lighting to the stage with an exquisite balance was wonderful.
Also, in the scene where the troupe members discuss, the feeling of staging while switching the lighting according to the scene was also magnificent.
Also, because there are many plays-within-a-play, there were scenes where the lighting was turned on up to the audience seats, creating a stage with a sense of daily life that made one wonder for a moment if the play had ended. The point of seamlessly staging that it is still a play-within-a-play and still the world of the story without any discomfort was also very magnificent.

Next, about the stage sound. Although there was no live performance in this work, sci-fi background music typical of "Nankyoku" was used everywhere, and I thought the way it was used brought out the originality of "Nankyoku" well.
I liked the music that played during sci-fi developments and tense scenes, such as Wow's swimming class scene, the man from the greenhouse scene, and the scene where they go back and forth between the story and reality using a car, because it had a retro feel that reminded me of old sci-fi movies.
I also liked the sound effects, which were very powerful. For example, regarding the scene where they retrograde and progress by car, there was a tremendous sound when the car hit something, and although that sound had enough impact to resonate in the small theater, it had a good balance that did not cause discomfort.

Finally, about other staging.
The staging of using the trapdoor as a public bathhouse and letting steam rise from it with a smoke machine was good. It makes one think that a hot spring has appeared on the theater stage. And the actors' sweat was so wet that it made one think they were really in a hot spring, and I thought that was a skillful use of something that was not intentionally staged but happened that way.
The impact of the CRT television was the best. From the moment it appeared in the beginning, I felt it was a typical "Nankyoku" staging. I didn't really understand what was being shown on the CRT television. However, that light green feeling and the old retro feeling matched the style of the work very well.
Since there are many stage sets and costumes, I was reminded of how wide the backstage of Shinjuku Theatre Tops is. I wondered if there was enough space to hide that many sets in the back.
I thought it was good that only "times" was real. Because such realistic things are inserted at key points, it was easier to recall.
It's a small detail, but there were customers who came to film the play-within-a-play, and Yugami-san, who explained that this is not a play but reality, saying it is also not immersive theater, made me laugh. There, I was made to think again about the boundary between reality and theater.
Actually, in the play-within-a-play at the stage where they finished the rehearsal, it was good that the "Nankyoku" staff also went up on stage and did the teardown work. Because there is such staging, it becomes a trick that makes the audience wonder if this world is a story or reality, and it was effective.

【Cast/Characters】 (*Contains spoilers)

While "Bird, Birder, Birdest" featured guest actors like Kamejima-san and Yui Okamoto from Lolo, this new production was performed entirely by company members, and it was wonderful to see such a unified level of passion. I will look at the actors who left a particularly strong impression.

First, there is Shiori Hashi from "Nankyoku" who played the role of Wow. I have seen Hashi-san perform in three past "Nankyoku Godzilla" productions.
I always think that Hashi-san is perfectly suited for the role of a mischievous young protagonist. In "(New) Jurassic Park" (March 2024), she also left an impression of being very well-suited for a protagonist with that kind of childlike heart.
In this play, her character is set as a special human with a resting body temperature of 43–45 degrees, higher than the average person—a setting that would be ruined if the performance itself lacked passion. It is deeply impressive that she overcame that challenge and performed with all her might, with a level of intensity that only Hashi-san could bring.
I think the existence of Wow itself is theater. It has more heat than general society and tends to be excluded. It is shunned in that way, but precisely because of that, it is an existence that can have a positive influence on people. Theater, too, was treated as an outcast and excluded by society, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but I think that because it is such a special existence, it can have a tremendous impact on people if it is just given a place like a theater.
The final monologue was also cool. Hearing that monologue at the end made me feel like I was about to be moved to tears again, and it made me feel that while it looked like a story about a world that only exists in theater, it was actually projecting reality.

Next is Yugami Normal, who played actors in the early scenes. I have also seen Yugami-san perform in three past "Nankyoku Godzilla" productions.
When the solo performance scene in the beginning first appeared, I honestly thought it was a bit rough. I thought what they were trying to do was interesting, but I even thought they should polish their acting skills more. However, I learned in the subsequent scenes that that was the direction itself! It left an impression on me to realize that acting poorly was the direction from the start.
Also, I think Yugami-san is an actor who seems like they would appear in a sci-fi movie. The scene where they move forward and backward in a car, like a scene from the movie "Tenet," was a perfect fit.

Next is Yushi Seyasu, who played the man in the greenhouse. I have also seen Seyasu-san perform in three past "Nankyoku Godzilla" productions.
At first, I didn't realize the setting was that the man in the greenhouse had come to the real world through forward movement, and I only realized it after re-reading the script. In this work, he was clearly a villain, and I felt that alone made him stand out. The villain played by Seyasu-san had a sense of being 'painful' in a very good way, and it felt like he was fully immersed in the role.
Also, as was the case in "Bird, Birder, Birdest," they are always recording with a video camera in the company members' scenes; I wonder if that has something to do with "Nankyoku's" activities. I always wondered if they were the recording staff in the rehearsal room.

Finally, Konnichi Hakase-san. I have also seen Konnichi Hakase-san perform in three past "Nankyoku Godzilla" productions.
I had the impression that this was the work where Konnichi Hakase-san had the most active scenes. They appeared second, so they had a high number of appearances, and since there are several scenes where they play an important role as a director, such as the rehearsal for "The Heat of Wow" in the play-within-a-play, I think they naturally became a prominent presence.
Since this work is fiction, I don't know what reality is like, but I sometimes wonder if it's always like this when "Nankyoku" puts on a performance. I felt like Konnichi Hakase-san was rambling about their obsession with the script, the actors were left dumbfounded, and even though the theater company had no money, they were pushing forward with the performance, pouring in their passion that this work would definitely be interesting to everyone.
The direction that shows the behind-the-scenes of creating such theater through the play itself was also good, and I felt that the goodness of this work was brought out precisely because it felt like Konnichi Hakase-san wasn't really doing much character building, but rather just being their usual self.

【Stage Analysis】 (*Contains spoilers)

Here, I would like to analyze the script of this work in my own way.

As mentioned above, this work is a play-within-a-play that is about 13 layers deep? That play-within-a-play goes back and forth between the inside and outside, just as Christopher Nolan's films "Inception" and "Tenet" go back and forth between reality and the dream world, or between time axes. Just this setting alone seems very interesting and exciting.
However, what makes this work wonderful is that it utilizes such a multi-layered meta-structure to delve into the essence of what theater is.

There is a very memorable conversation in a scene in the play. The actors participate in a workshop where they perform by playing assigned roles, but since the time on the way home is the real world, they shouldn't be in those roles from the workshop, yet there was a scene where they talked about how there are times when they are still in those roles. As an audience member like me, I wonder if that happens, but if you are an actor, you might have some idea of what that's like.
When I listen to 2.5D actors talk, I have heard them worry that the habits of the characters they play don't leave them in the real world, and they end up reacting like the characters. Being fully immersed in a role might mean that it is often the case that you cannot fully return from that role even in the real world.
What I found interesting was the line in the next scene. It was a fear that if you make fun of things that seem like they could happen in reality in the world of the story, like "Skits: Interview" or "Skits: Call Center," you might not be able to live seriously in the real world. I thought this was very interesting. I think this is a wall you only hit if you are an actor.

As a result, Hashi tried to reach the deepest part of "The Heat of Wow" by performing a ritual to erode reality with the story in order to obtain something important as a performer. From this depiction, what kind of message is this work trying to leave behind?
Theater is generally thought of as nothing more than fiction by the public. No matter how painful the depiction in a play is, if you think of it as fiction, you can watch it from a distance. Theater may give pleasure to those who do it and to the audience, but because it is ultimately fiction, I think it is also something that is treated lightly.
In the era when the state of emergency was declared during the COVID-19 pandemic, theater was oppressed as something unnecessary and non-urgent. After all, that is how theater is treated in the eyes of the public.
However, if even the people who perform theater think that way, then theater is finished. If reality permeates the story, or if it is swallowed by the pressure of such reality, theater will be lost. I think the only way to prevent that is to permeate reality with what can only be obtained because it is a story. I think that is the important thing as a performer at the deepest part of "The Heat of Wow," in other words, an out-of-place artifact.

In this work, Wow possessed that out-of-place artifact-like thing. Wow had a special quality that an ordinary person would never have: a resting body temperature of 43–45 degrees, which is higher than that of an ordinary person. Because of that, Wow was oppressed by shops and the like, in other words, socially oppressed. If we consider the existence of Wow to be theater itself, or something important as theater, this might be a metaphor for the fact that because it has the special quality that is considered good in theater, it was in a position to be excluded from society. I think this is a part that resonates with theater people who have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, because of the resting body temperature that Wow has, "Wow Public Bath" appears, and the local area becomes lively and full of energy. In other words, the special quality that is considered good in theater, which tends to be socially excluded, becomes something that has a positive influence on people once it is performed as theater and catches people's eyes.
It is a play-within-a-play that depicts the process of an actor named Shiori Hashi taking that essence of theater out from the deepest part of "The Heat of Wow" and performing it as "The Heat of Wow" at Shinjuku Theater Tops.

If we, the audience, are moved and influenced in a positive direction through this work, then this work is completed as a play with a meta-structure. As a result, this work is highly acclaimed by the public, so it is only with an audience that this work is established as a theatrical work with a multi-layered meta-structure. Through the actor Shiori Hashi, by taking out the important thing for a performer at the deepest part of the story "The Heat of Wow" and permeating it from the world of the story into the real world, it can be said that we, the audience, were fascinated by the heat of the theater and influenced in a good way.

It is rare to see a play that involves the audience to this extent by utilizing a meta-structure. I feel like I'm being condescending, but I think it was a very wonderful script and directorial composition. I look forward to their future success. A "Nankyoku" performance at the Honda Theater might not be in the distant future.

↓Nankyoku Past Performances