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Yukio Mishima's theater piece takes place in a surreal hospital where a businessman arrives to visit his wife, who has fallen ill under mysterious circumstances and who is repeatedly haunted by nocturnal visitations by the ghost of her husband's former lover. This ghostly woman leads the man back into the past, when they were both young and in love, and returns him to the place of injury where the woman's obsessions first took their fatal turn. The apparition departs, leaving the man confused and thrown off the ordinarily smooth course of his life. Was the vision merely a dream or did he actually encounter a ghost?
Mishima's poetic language and the unique symbolism of his imagery transform these night-bound terrors into a subtle and many-layered theatrical experience.
The Lady Aoi can be understood as a modern Nô drama. Mishima says: "It's almost impossible to convey the full stylized beauty of a Nô play... I have merely adopted its theme..." Hence, rather than attempting to imitate the techniques of the Nô theater, the genre is enlivened by its being transferred into a modern formal idiom.

The play was directed by George Ferencz from New York. Not only did Ferencz earn a name for himself at Ellen Stewart's La Mama Theater, he also won renown through his staging of numerous other off-off-Broadway shows. Japanese stage designer Watoku Ueno, likewise active at La Mama Theater in New York, conceived an unusual theatrical space that combines simplicity with suggestive power.

Meta Theater 9/2000