Maraudo — Visitors from the World Beyond (Review)

Lafcadio Hearn

When artists collaborate with ghosts the results can be peculiar and disquieting. And no stranger wraith exists than that of Lafcadio Hearn who in the century or more since his death has remained as active and curious as when he was alive.

Born in Greece, raised as a child in Ireland, Lafcadio in his corporeal state had many journeys around the world writing stories, essays and novels influenced by his experiences. Finally he settled in Japan where he retold the dark folktales of a land caught in the process of often painful renewal, as western influences shaped and often replaced centuries old Japanese traditions in governance, economy and culture.

Death did nothing to diminish Lafcadio’s ever active, ever asking mind, as with every passing decade new generations of Japanese artists and thinkers sought him out. In 1964 four of Lafcadio’s ghost stories were used as the basis of Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan, a long slow disturbing movie, described by Tor fantasy and Sci-Fi website as ‘beautiful, cold and exquisitely unreal’.

A more recent collaboration with Lafcadio is Maraudo — Visitors from the World Beyond in which the unsettling power of Lafcadio’s work and his life were played out before an audience in Galway Arts Centre's Nun’s Island Theatre by the actor Shiro Sano  and rock guitarist  Kyoji Yamamoto.

The setting used in this production was stark and uncluttered.  Each performer had a chair in which they remain seated throughout the production. In addition they each had a small table beside them. On Shiro’s table were the script and a small imitation candle; on Kyoji’s a mixing board connected to his electric guitar. On the stage before them a line of electronic candles. Behind and above them a dark screen. Apart from the occasional image this screen was mostly used to post up English translations of the Shiro’s performance. White on black the words hung high in the air adding to a sense of vastness and depth that, as the show unfolded, threatened to swallow and crush the audience.

Maraudo — Visitors from the World Beyond began quietly enough, with Shiro Sano readings extracts from letters from Lafcadio and reminiscences from his family. These showed that even as a child in Ireland Lafcadio was pulled towards the dark and the macabre. Following this intro a selection of Lafcadio’s stories were retold, or perhaps a better word would be revealed for the telling was slow and careful and with every word spoken and every white word hung above, with every note played or distorted or abruptly ended, Other Worlds were brought closer and closer to our short and mortal reality.

We glimpsed the World of Lafcadio’s childhood, the World of his imagination; the World of a Japan shifting from Shugon feudalism to westernised Imperial oligarchy. More than anything we were given glimpses of the World beyond; the World of Gods and Goblins; of awesome powers that needs be kept in balance lest they destroy everything we hold dear.

With the progression of the tales, the telling became ever more animate, with Shiro Sano morphing into a magical shapeshifter, one moment his face that of giggling girl, the next the mask of a haughty elite warrior. His voice rose, fell, stilled and screamed all the while perfectly matched by the performance of Kyoji Yamamoto as he plucked and spilled and tapped and roared sounds from his electric guitar. Soon the expressions and range of actor and guitar became so perfectly blended that at times it seemed the guitar was the storyteller and the actor the musical instrument

The climax of the evening was the retelling of The Living God, a tale of a coastal community who are startled one evening to see the waters suddenly slipping further and further away towards the Horizon, revealing the bottom of the sea. In our interconnected world we know the horror that is coming, yet our cognition only makes the tale more horrifying. There is nothing we can do but listen with dread to the voice and music of the tale. When the sea returns, high as a cliff and flecked with foam Shiro screamed ‘Tsunami!’ and then became utterly stilled and silent. As the actor sat, almost as if at prayer, Yamamoto drew out from his guitar a growl that grew steadily and unceasingly louder and angrier and louder and angrier and ever more terrifying until it was a huge spitting, seething wall of sound smashing through coastline, homes, fields; ripping apart the very soil and sod of the landscape as we the audience were caught and ripped and reshaped in the pounding, roaring foam-flecked immeasurable power of the Living God.

And then there was silence.  The world resettled itself. The show was over. Yamamoto and Shiro bowed. The audience breathed again and as they broke into applause Lafcadio and all his tales of goblins and warriors and wives and Gods and tricksters returned satisfied to the World Beyond.

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Me, Shiro & Yoshimi after the show

Post Script. A big thank you to Shiro, Yamamoto and Yoshimi of Wa Café for inviting me tell one of my macabre tales before the start of the show.

Lyric FM recently did a fascinating documentary on Lafacdio Hearn, which includes a reading from The Living God. Listen to it on The Lyric Feature.

 Also check out:

John Moran: Coming home – An Irishman’s Diary on Lafcadio Hearn and Dublin

Lafcadio Hearn Gardens: The story of Lafcadio Hearn 

Shiro Sano and Kyoji Yamamoto: Lafcadio Hearn Reading Performance

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For more on my work as a writer and storyteller see rabfultonstories

My new workshops on writing dark tales of Horror, Sci-fi and Fantasy begin January 2016. For details see: Writing Dark Tales - creative writing workshops.

Fans of dark tales, may want to check out my online blog novel Marcus Marcus & the Hurting Heart which was commissioned by the Múscailt Arts Festival.

The Pity and Horror of Frankenstein

In 1818 Mary Shelley published a book about the relationship between two men, a relationship forged in blood, unrequited love, rage and unbreakable hatred. Both men in the tale of ‘Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus’  have the capacity for doing great good, yet only evil comes of their relationship.

The pity of the tale is that the main character, Victor Frankenstein, is a good and loving man marred by two fatal flaws; his compulsion to take science into a new realm and his inability to feel empathy for the creature he creates. For its part the monster contains within its massive and ugly form a vast capacity for love and passion and learning. Yet like a child it feels things to extreme. When it suffers rejection, first by its creator and then by the other people it meets on its journey, it is overwhelmed by a blinding need to revenge itself on Dr Frankenstein and all that he loves. Far from the clunking brute of the movies, Mary Shelley’s original monster is a sophisticated being whose acts of savagery have an eloquent and awful logic to them.

It is well to remember that the title of the story is ‘Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus’. In the ancient Greek myth it is Prometheus who stole fire from the eternal Gods to give to it to the mortal humans. Fire is essential for human development but the focus of the myth is on the deeds, thoughts and suffering of the stealer of fire. Likewise the focus of Mary Shelley’s story is on Doctor Frankenstein, the stealer of the ultimate secret, how to create life. It is his deeds that create the monster, his deeds that compel the monster to carry out such awful acts. It is Dr Frankenstein who is central to the most gruesome and terrible sections of the tale. It is he who plays with the gore and flesh of the dead in order to create a creature, and it is he who is responsible for one of the most tense and dark moments in the book.

It is this event that for me proves (if proof were needed) how important and constantly relevant and contemporary Mary Shelley’s tale is. The doctor returns to his family home to find it filled with awful suffering. His youngest brother, a mere child, has been strangled. Worse, it is the family’s much loved maid who has been arrested for the crime. Yet Frankenstein has no doubt that it was his creature that committed the murder. But he does not speak out. As the evidence is gathered the doctor is racked by guilt but he will not reveal his secret, that he has created a living being that is bent on murder and revenge. The maid is put on trial, is found guilty, and sentenced to die. Yet still the doctor remains mute. On the evening before her execution, the maid asks for Frankenstein and his adopted sister Elizabeth to visit her in her cell. But though Frankenstein is possessed of a ‘horrid anguish’ he chooses not to speak out. The maid is hung. 

Though the story is two hundred years old, it resonates in this era of monstrous crimes and monstrous enemies – crimes and enemies often created by those who now oppose them. One result of this seemingly endless new normal of fear, paranoia and hatred is good, passionate and clever men - and it is inevitably men - take decision every day that cause great hurt to the innocent. Often those decisions are made to ensure that important secrets remain hidden: secret agendas, secret negotiations, secret alliances, secret Intelligence sources, secret (and shameful) responsibility for the whole awful, gory and yet entirely avoidable mess.

The true horror of Mary Shelley’s book is the same horror that plays out on today’s twenty-four hour news cycle: the impossibility of knowing who the real monster is.

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A creature with many similarities to Frankenstein’s monster is the Golem of Jewish folklore. In 1911 a version was written down for children by ‘Aunt Naomi’. To hear the storynory.com audio version check out The Golem ofPrague 

I read a lot of horror stories. One of my favourites is We Are Wormwood  by Autumn Christian. I highly recommend you go get a copy now.

Stay tuned to my blog to read more of my articles about horror stories. 

For more about my work as a storyteller, blogger, author, tutor and performer see rabfultonstories Follow me on twitter @haveringrab and Instagram @celtictalesgalway