REVIEW: The Great Wave – Theatre Royal. Glasgow
The Great Wave Off Kanagawa is one of the world’s most recognisable works of art: prints. posters, mugs, magnets, and a whole host of goods, from tacky to tasteful are adorned with the image, but little is known about the artist himself.
Long-time collaborators, London-based, Japanese composer Dai Fujikura and Scottish librettist Harry Ross, have taken the creator of the iconic, 1830s wood block print, revered artist Katsushika Hokusai as it’s inspiration for their world premier production The Great Wave. This bio-opera explores the almost unbelievable personal hurdles Hokusai overcame as well as his relationship with his daughter Ōi, a relationship that redefined Japanese art and created a global art phenomenon.
As concepts go it is an original one, but the lives of the great artists often don’t make for great entertainment, especially when there’s a lack of familiarity with the subject matter. While detail is scant, there is enough known about Hokusai’s nomadic life and relationships with his family to weave a potentially interesting narrative: struck by lightning at 50, a stroke at 60 that meant re-learning his art, forced to pay off his grandson’s debts, a fire that destroyed his studio and the artwork within, a long life that outlasted both of his wives and two of his children, and despite living in a country mostly isolated from the outside world, Hokusai is an artist that influenced both Monet and Van Gogh.
While Harry Ross successfully portrays Hokusai’s lively spirit and eternal optimism, his commercial eye and his life-long pursuit of perfection, the mosaic-like libretto with its two dream sequences is too kaleidoscopic. The mosaic is in need of some mortar to hold it together more strongly. Dai Fujikura’s score is bare and often atonal with motifs repeated throughout. It is enlivened however by his use of the shakuhachi in acts one and five, the breathy Japanese flute lends its personality and much-needed atmosphere and character, but it is criminally underused.
Daisuke Ohyama’s lively acting skills are on full display as Hokusai, but vocally he seems rather underpowered, something that could be written off as first night nerves. Julieth Lozano Rolong is fine-voiced as Hokusai’s daughter Ōi, as is the ever-reliable Shengzhi Ren as sweet shop owner Mr Tozaki.
For a work based on one of the world’s most recognisable works of art, the set is somewhat minimalistic. It reflects the colours of the woodblock print, but it is visually dull.
The Great Wave has the promise to be an intriguing work, but this uneven hybrid of East and West feels as if it is much more West than East and suffers because of it.
Runs until 14 February 2026 | Image: Mihaela Bodlovich
