New York Fringe Festival Report: \'Hanafuda Denki\'

By RACHEL SALTZ

Reviews of shows from the New York International Fringe Festival will appear on ArtsBeat through the festival's close on Aug. 26. For more information, go to fringenyc.org.

A riff on death and the sad game of living, “Hanafuda Denki (A Tale of Fantastic Traditional Playing Cards)”  begins with a bang and a statement (delivered in English) that quickly proves true: “Ladies and gentlemen, it's show time!” Cue the kick line and the first big brassy number, “House of the Dead.”

That's also the name of the funeral parlor in Tokyo where the action takes place. And here's the twist: it's run by a family of very lively dead people. Even their cat is dead, we're told. And so, for good measure, is their goldfish. Trouble arrives when the daughter of the house â€" “I hate the dead,” she proclaims - falls for a living boy, Kitaro of the Graveyard, and the two worlds, dead and alive, start mixing it up.

The br ainchild of Shuji Terayama, a Japanese playwright, filmmaker and all-around artistic provocateur (he died in 1983), “Hanafuda” claims a debt to Brecht and Weill's “Threepenny Opera.” That influence comes not in story but in style: the mordant humor, the catchy, poppy songs (by Makoto Honda) and the tweaking of social orthodoxies. “He was nice,” says Danjuro, the head of the House of the Dead, about a funeral client. “What a shame he didn't die sooner.” (For a fee, Danjuro will supply the death as well as the funeral.) Not that being dead is all fun and games - a person is liable to miss the essentials of living: the racetrack, porn, brothels, prison.

Performed with full-tilt commitment and unusual discipline by the Ryuzanji Company, the show, directed by Saori Aoki with little flourishes of the grotesque, has rowdy, propulsive energy that almost never flags. It could use a few more moments of calm and a few less of high-voltage shouting, though a couple of songs manage a quiet melancholy, including one delivered by a dead boy killed by a train under a mackerel sky.

And about that train … watch out. Do you hear the whistle blowing? The dead want company, so you may want to sneak out before the end. Because it may be the End.

“Hanafuda Denki” continues through Sunday at Here Arts, 145 Avenue of the Americas at Dominick Street, South Village, (866) 468-7619.