–320°F review – join Cleopatra, Faust and the Pied Piper on a zany odyssey

Sadler’s Wells, London
Hideki Noda’s spectacular vision of villainous biotech and bone conduction is full of dazzling coups but gets bogged down in its earnest message

This wacky futuristic fantasy by Japanese writer-director Hideki Noda aims high. It opens with none other than God observing the Tower of Babel, which creeps up to the heavens in the shape of a skyscraper. Cue an irreverent satirical drama that covers the age of dinosaurs, Cleopatra’s frozen eggs (were they fertilised by Julius Caesar or Mark Antony?) and biotech, all via a plot involving time travel, diseased angels and, well, bone conduction: the present day bones of the protagonist, Help (Sadawo Abe), connect with fossilised ones through vibration.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Koji Ohkura) turns up, as do Mephisto (Suzu Hirose) and Faust (Isao Hashizume). Noda performs too, as a researcher in the cutthroat world of gene science. The underlying preoccupation is with the ethics of eradicating disease and the creation of the “ultimate” human. The story was partly inspired by the mass killings at a care home in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo, in 2016, by a former employee who wanted disabled people to “disappear”. Help, who is D/deaf, takes a bumpy Back to the Future-style trip to the past in order to connect with bones that form mankind’s inheritance and further medical discovery.
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