There are certain events that have changed the world as we've known it so much that even years later we remember where we were when it happened. “Five Days in March – Re-creation” follows youngsters in a love hotel in Tokyo at the same time as the USA bombed Iraq in 2003. As the title of the performance insist, it's a report – a really, really detailed, I mean, detailed to the level of absurd report presented with an enthusiasm and love towards details that most of us never find time or energy for. Although the bombing in Iraq is referenced – mostly through admitting that the TV was not switched on and there were other, more personally significant things to worry about (lack of condoms for example) – “Five Days in March – Re-creation” is mostly about Everyman and their incapability to influence the world outside one's daily routine. If you've seen the work by Toshiki Okada / chelfitsch before, you know that at the same time as performers speak (a lot) they are constantly moving (dancing even, as it is choreographed): slightly swinging from right to left, from up to down, making circles with their hands, etc., as if they're in a constant state of unease. This dissonance in the meaning of the words spoken and movements accompanying them obviously creates a rather humorous stage-presence that also works as a metaphor for how stuck we are in our own life – or how we have been forced to stay in the micro-politics of everyday. I immensely enjoyed their “Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech” when I saw it seven years ago but the re-creation of “Five Days in March” more than ten years after its original release seen now didn't really have the same effect on me. Perhaps the bombing of Iraq in 2003 isn't that vividly in my mind any more (and perhaps this is exactly the reason to re-crate the production) but it's more probable that the aesthetics of “Five Days in March – Re-creation” are today common enough to be taken as a walk on the memory lane.
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