A RABBIT FOR KIM JONG IL
A RABBIT FOR KIM JONG-IL, Griffin Theatre Company at the SBW Stables Theatre. October 16-November 21, 2015. Photography by Brett Boardman, above: Kit Brookman and Steve Rodgers.
Kit Brookman’s new play opens with a firework display of energy and promise as Steve Rodgers powers the unlikely (but based on a true event!) farce of simple German rabbit breeder Johann’s initial dealings with North Korean envoy Mr Chung (Kaeng Chan). Chung’s on a mission from the Dear Leader of the title to acquire Johann’s unique 25kg animals. The plan is that they will even further enhance the perfection of life in the republic where, of course, mass famine and terror are the vile inventions of the imperialist running dog lackeys of the West.
Mr Chung has arrived with a briefcase containing 100,000 crisp Euros and is eager to swap it for the bunnies and get back to Pyongyang, but Johann is fond of the main rabbit Felix (Kit Brookman) and has misgivings. Even though he’s stony broke it was never about money and he hesitates. Mr Chung is not happy; he forces the issue in a nasty and extremely undiplomatic way and suddenly the rabbits are gone.
All is not lost, however, because Johann has intrepid pet supplies assistant Sofie (Kate Box) on his side. Before you can say “rabbit pellets” they have smuggled themselves from rural Germany to North Korea in a bid to get back Felix and his gang. There they fall into the hands of Mr Chung’s stern superior Ms Park Chun-Hei (Meme Thorne) and as she bears a passing resemblance to Lotte Lenya’s Colonel Klebb in From Russia With Love, the omens go quickly from bad to worse.
Meanwhile, although Mr Chung previously snarled to Johann that rabbits don’t talk, Felix proves him wrong in a charming and whimsical way; he’s an erudite and amiable rabbit – not so much like Hollywood’s invisible 6’ Harvey as his friend, Elwood P Dowd (James Stewart). In his long ears and tatty beige togs, Brookman’s Felix is a memorable character and much more interesting and emotionally available than anyone else on the stage.
And therein lies the rub: no matter how hard and well they work (and they do) the actors cannot knit together the disparate characters and incoherent narrative strands. Director Lee Lewis makes some lovely segments here and there but it would be impossible to do more with the play in its current incarnation. It’s broken-backed and there is no sense or feeling connecting the two “halves” (100 minutes straight through).
The play is neither farce nor thriller, comedy nor lightly philosophical drama. The title suggests satire might be in the mix but aside from some very obvious stabs at it – karaoke and grimly uniformed North Koreans worshipping a grinning portrait of the Dear Leader – that possibility isn’t realised.
As Johann, Steve Rodgers is called upon to give us his charmingly innocent Everyman and although he does it as well as ever, there is more to this actor than that; Meme Thorne and Kaeng Chan are efficiently inscrutable and meanly Oriental, while the usually excellent Kate Box is reduced to panicky shouting in the face of a character whose identity and raison d’etre are suddenly revealed as completely ridiculous.
Ironically – given the way humans treat animals – it’s Felix the rabbit who emerges best from this bizarrely interesting failure and his final words to the hapless Johann give a whiff of what might have been. A Rabbit For Kim Jong-Il sounded good on the drawing board and has some intriguing and entertaining moments, but in the end it doesn’t work. However, there’s enough there to wish it could be taken apart and reworked, meanwhile if you want to know whether Felix finally managed to do a runner, you know where to go.
