REVIEW: Princess Amnesia, Headgate Theatre, Colchester Fringe ✭✭✭✭

Paul T Davies reviews Princess Amnesia at Headgate Theatre presented as part of Colchester Fringe Festival.

Princess AmnesiaHeadgate Theatre, Colchester Fringe Festival4 Stars Colchester Fringe Website

Among a lineup of world premieres at Colchester Fringe, comes this intriguing piece from SOZOROGOTO, hailing from Osaka, Japan. We enter a childhood world, a girl’s world of pink and fluffy toys, and Princess Amnesia greets us. But the story has been written, she is doomed to forget, must ask us who she is and what she was talking about, and can only truly remember the truth of her existence once the bell rings. This fairy tale world cannot last, and we get hints of the reality of her condition, especially when she must choose between a Japanese passport and a Filipino one. She enters the fairy castle, and then emerges into a stunning revelation of the exploitation of foreign workers that her parent’s generation suffered in Japan.

The reality is harsh, brutal, with child neglect and prostitution, a seemingly endless cycle of entrapment. From the start, performer Liko Takada exhibits a fragile beauty, switching effortlessly into the sleazy underworld of reality, but that fairy tale denial still creeps though into this world, the play examining the shields we put up to protect ourselves, often at the cost of others. It's a thought-provoking, involving piece, beautifully directed by Kayo  Tamura from GUMBO theatre, and embraces the wonderful Fringe spirit of experimentation and risk.