Skip to main content
Milwaukie-based Dark Horse Comics is the mothership for blockbuster films based on graphic novels—Sin City, Hellboy, The Mask. But one of the company's early titles is taking a different route and becoming a play.
Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo is a cult classic in the comic world. The 31-year-old series follows a bunny on his quest to become a samurai in 16th-century Japan. With more than 20 Eisner nominations—the Oscars of comic books—Sakai is rightfully pleased. "I have the best job in the world," he says. "I have a wonderful relationship with Dark Horse, and I am able to draw my stories without interference. Love stories, action/adventure, historical dramas. I've even taken Usagi into space."
Notoriously independent, Sakai loosened his hold on his masterpiece to see it live. Usagi has appeared onscreen in things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—"I've learned to be flexible since his TV appearances," says Sakai—but live-action is a different beast. "My storytelling style is heavily influenced by cinema, with huge samurai armies and larger panels, and my lettering on the comic-book page is very expressive. You can't see that on the stage."
Performed in only one theater before—London's Southwark Playhouse—the stage version by Stewart Melton is a study in adaptation as much as it is entertainment. Southwark's production channeled Cirque du Soleil's Kà, with ninja fight scenes, face paint, taiko drumming and mountains projected onto the blank stage for characters to "climb."
Portland Community College's staging has all the makings of an epic, too: impeccable animal masks made by local costumer Danielle Bash, a lighting and flight system to rival Portland Center Stage, and the blessing of Sakai himself (he signed books on opening night). The North American debut opened to a crowd of proud parents and young boys who stayed up past their bedtimes to watch the iconic bunny earn his topknot. But this production does the opposite of Sakai's comics. It takes live-action drama and flattens it.
"When a character dies [in the comics], there's this wonderful word balloon with a picture of a skull that Stan uses," says director Patrick Tangredi. "I wish I could do something like that in the show."
He does have a 10-foot-tall bear that takes three actors to operate, and a mixed cast of students and professionals who successfully weather the full-face masks. Beaverton High graduate Blaine Vincent III projects bottled rage when his mother forces him to apologize to a frenemy, and he convincingly mimes sludging through swampland. Scenic designer Dan Hays ingeniously spotlights characters during battle scenes and raises the stagewide mountain cutout to make it a pagoda roof. But long, mimed treks and pregnant pauses between the fights make for a slow journey.
Perhaps a samurai's legendary patience and a comic fan's lively imagination are keys. "As [cartoonist] Scott McCloud points out," says Tangredi, "a lot of what happens in comics happens in our imaginations, between the panels."
see it: Unagi Yojimbo is at Sylvania Performing Arts Center, 12000 SW 49th Ave., 971-722-4323. 11 am Thursday, 7 pm Friday-Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 12-15. $10.
Willamette Week