Review by Samuel L. Leiter…

Anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time in Japan, as I have, is aware of the ubiquitous popularity there of the ancient art of wrestling called sumo, Japan’s national sport (aside from baseball). If you’re in Japan during one of the six annual 15-day tournaments, you’ll notice how often sumo matches are occupying TV screens in public places and private homes, even when it’s just background noise in a busy convenience store or during a dinner conversation. 

Embedded in highly formalized rules accompanied by Shinto-based rituals, sumo incorporates distinctly theatrical elements. Its arenas even call the runways through the audience hanamichi, just as in kabuki. 

Once you’ve seen sumo’s typically massive rikishi, wrestlers who wear specialized sash/loincloths called mawashi exposing their meaty buttocks, you might wonder how a play about such unique athletes could possibly be realized, especially one written by an American woman in English. Yet Lisa Sanaye Dring has wrestled an intriguing example into shape in Sumo, now at the Public’s Anspacher Theater in a Ma-Yi Theater Company production originally staged at California’s La Jolla Playhouse in 2023.

Ma-Yi, whose mission is to promote Asian-American performance, has cast nine actors of varied Asian heritage to play its six wrestlers and three referee/Shinto priests (kannushi). The latter, sometimes serving as a chorus, jokingly welcome us to “the all-Asian revival of Gatz,” before providing informational notes for the uninstructed on sumo and its ranking hierarchy. 

If you plan to go and never have seen sumo, you should take a few moments to watch a few of the countless videos of the real thing available on YouTube. Sumo, imaginatively directed by Ralph B. Peña, includes some features that, under the circumstances, will differ somewhat, but are acceptably close approximations of what you’ll see there. However, the show often must make significant adjustments, so much has to be taken with many grains of salt. 

Speaking of salt, you’ll observe, when you watch video clips, how often the wrestlers ostentatiously fling it onto the sand floor of the ring (a circle outlined by straw-filled packets), and sometimes even rubbed on the wrestlers’ own bodies, primarily for ritual purification. This fascinating convention is one of many that, in the interests of practicality, have been scrapped here. As in real sumo, the many matches included are very brief, often lasting only a few seconds. Effectively staged by sumo consultant James Yaegashi and Chelsea Pace, the bouts generally resemble real ones, although a bit too many, perhaps, are decided by judo-type flips. After all, one can win merely by forcing an opponent to come in contact with the ground outside the ring.

One major omission, which to have included would have extended the run time beyond its already too long two hours and 20 minutes, is what happens just before a bout commences. During these often extended preliminaries, the rikishi, crouching slightly, perform many alternating sideways leg raises and stomps, before engaging in face-to-face crouch-offs. Each is quickly followed by the combatants rising and walking away a few steps, only for them to do another crouch-off leading to the same result, and so on. After each delay, they strew salt about until, finally, a glaring crouch-off ends with them leaping at each other. 

Even with the omissions and compressions into pseudo sumo needed for dramatic purposes, the ingredients provided make an impression. Enough features faithful to the models have been incorporated to satisfy most audiences that they’re getting something sufficiently similar to the original. Helping capture the traditional aura are the wigs created by Alberto “Albee” Alvarado to resemble sumo’s familiar chonmage hairstyle of heavily oiled hair formed into a topknot. 

For most, the first image of sumo that comes to mind is of wrestlers with memorably ample physiques, which must have created nightmares when the show was being cast. Seeing a sumo wrestler in private life, dressed in gorgeous kimono or yukata, his every hair in place, is a sight never to be forgotten. Kabuki actors have masterfully created wigs, costumes, and makeups to make even average-sized actors look much larger than they are. 

In the play, several actors look not too dissimilar from actual rikishi. Unavoidably, others do not, most conspicuously the physically boyish Scott Keiji Takada, who brings convincing intensity to the central role of an ambitious 18-year-old wannabe wrestler named Aoki, called a “shrimp” by his fellow fighters. In a sport where weight and size classes exist only among amateurs, it’s not impossible to accept him as a rikishi. More difficult, though, is thinking this diminutive David can become a champion (yokozuna) in a field dominated by Goliaths. (Note: Mitsuo, the play’s highest-ranking wrestler, is played by the sturdily built but less than huge David Shih, who nonetheless towers over Akio). 

FYI, the lightest rikishi in history is one of the small group of non-Japanese to excel at the sport. A 6’ 1”, 200-pound Czech named Pavel Bojar (Takanoyama Shuntarō), he often defeated fighters twice his size, gaining respect and popularity, but his size ultimately worked against him, and he never broke into the elite ranks. This subject of body appropriateness is one where skeptical viewers will need to swallow those missing grains of salt. In the long view, though, such discrepancies almost always happens to some degree in sports-related plays and films. Compare, for one small example, the thighs of actors portraying baseball players against those who make their living from the game.

Dring’s play takes us into the world of sumo through the stories of six wrestlers belonging to the same Tokyo “stable” (heya) where they live and train, with a primary focus on the young Akio and his mentoring by the strict, slightly sadistic, but nevertheless paternalistic Mitsuo (played by Shih with authoritative presence). The older man holds the rank of ōzeki, one below yokozuna, which he eventually obtains. 

This mentor-mentee relationship, along with Akio’s often charged relations with his fellow rikishi, demonstrates the difficulty of obtaining success in this hieratic environment, which requires huge sacrifices of blood, sweat, tears, and sex (fraternizing with women is forbidden except for the highest ranks). Becoming a sumo wrestler demands monk-like devotion and focus. Among the other character-related plotlines is a secretive homosexual affair going on between two of these ultra-masculine rikishi, Ren (Ahmad Kamal) and Fumio (Red Concepción). When their powerful bodies embrace combatively as they grab at their opponent’s sash, their efforts to toss the other down or out of the ring are rife with forbidden feelings.

Unfortunately, the dramatic episodes and characters are too thinly developed to make much of an emotional impact. They’re sufficient, however, to offer insights into the practices of an exotic world that few outsiders have penetrated. The men are all colorfully differentiated, and their environment is established with enough spirit to hold your interest. There’s even a karaoke party during which the men get to perform.

Peña’s staging has Wilson Chin’s set surrounded by the audience on three sides with a wrestling ring (dohyo) at center, backed by a wooden wall with sliding panels. Its surface reflects Hannah S. Kim’s multitudinous, often kinetic, projections, many depicting kitschy images from Japanese culture, including vintage advertising posters and kabuki makeups. Even the floor is used for Kim’s kaleidoscopic pictures, as the actors move from realistic behavior to highly choreographic, dancelike, patterns, backed by Fabian Obispo’s pulsing score. Paul Whitaker’s lighting adds immeasurably to the impact, and Mariko Ohigashi’s striking costumes look sumo-perfect (except when a couple of actors have trouble keeping the front flaps of their mawashi sashes in place).

Theatrical liberties, naturally, are frequent in this busy production, among them the introduction of dramatic taiko drumming, performed by Shih-Wei Yu above the rear wall, during the bouts and elsewhere. There’s also the spectacular appearance at the end of the goddess Amaterasu, best known for her legendary role in inspiring Japanese theater, here depicted in noh mask and splendid regalia, providing a touch of sacred glory to Mitsuo’s achievement. Earlier, we’ve been told by the kannushi that two male deities were responsible for sumo’s creation, but they’ve obviously deferred to Amaterasu as if she were the sport’s patron deity. 

Sumo may be mildly passable as a work of (overlong) dramatic art. As a theatrical experience, however, especially if you’ve even a slight interest in traditional Japanese culture, it’s recommended. Just be sure you take a shaker of salt.

More information: Sumo

Public Theater/Anspacher Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, NY, Through March 30

Photos by Joan Marcus.