No one in Aya Ogawa’s Meat Suit ever speaks or explains the title phrase, but based on its use in fantasy literature and a Netflix documentary, it refers to a human body inhabited by a demon or alien. The play’s subtitle, The Shitshow of Motherhood, also conjures a negative impression of motherhood. So, too, does almost everything in the show—and in exhaustingly absurdist fashion. The play may not turn anyone off to motherhood, but it could turn people off to any future theatrical explorations of it.
Suicide Forest
The challenges are as great as the rewards in Haruna Lee’s Suicide Forest, a tortured, weird, and very personal fantasy that includes passages spoken in Japanese, bouts of simulated schoolgirl molestation, and a lengthy scene in near darkness with characters dressed as goats and wearing headlamps. But those willing to go along on this guilt trip, skillfully guided by director Aya Ogawa, will be find unexpectedly beautiful moments of theatricality and an ending that pivots from madness to reality with the force of an emergency brake being thrown on a speeding train.



