‘When you’re alone you don’t think things through properly,’ bemoans Hello Kitty (an internet pseudonym, obviously), explaining his failure to kill himself. Shoji Kokami’s play was motivated by a series of teen suicide pacts in Japan, and his first error may have been to make his trio of would-be self-harmers fully adult – after all, teenagers are notorious for not thinking things through properly, alone or otherwise.
There is one teen here: Akio (Joe Morrow, excellent), but he is a guilt-induced vision of a depressive high-schooler that Kazumi, a councillor, failed to save. Now Kazumi wants to do better with Hello Kitty and Masa, at least one of whom is genuinely insane, although madness is just another human frailty Kokami, who also directs, plays for cheap laughs.
It’s possible the playwright’s idea simply doesn’t translate well: after all, suicide has a very different place in Japanese society. But it’s hard to remain patient with a councillor who appears never to have heard of enabling, or with a script that subjects us to an entire nursery tale in order to make the point that different people see life differently.
The central notion – that when you’re not alone you may still fail to think things through properly, but you’re more likely to survive your conclusions – is as obvious as the gay-cliché jokes, and by the end of this lumpen suicide farce, the audience could be forgiven for wanting to succeed where the characters have failed.