A Collage of ‘Mishima’ at East West

How many schoolgirls get to have Yukio Mishima as a house guest?

“When I was a freshman at Radcliffe, I came home and there he was,” recalled playwright Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, whose examination of Japan’s flamboyant writer, “Mishima,” opens Thursday at East West Players. “He was giving a paper at the University of Michigan, where my father was a professor of Japanese literature. My parents had a lot of visitors from Japan who wore three-piece suits, were very formal. But Mishima was surprisingly Western. He was not at all stuffy, enjoyed going to the beach.”

In those days, she said there was no portent of his darker future.

“The idea to do this came to me when he died--in such a dramatic fashion (staging a 1970 assault on Tokyo’s military headquarters, then committing seppuku , ritual suicide). It made me curious why someone so full of life and energy would choose to die so young. But as I read the biographies on him, I realized he’d planned his entire life for that moment. He was always drawn to the old Japan; he wanted to bring back that feudal glory, the position of power, samurai worship. That’s why he had an army of 100 young men--and one of them died with him.”

There has been speculation that the suicide was a love pact.

“That’s part of it,” the playwright said. “Also, Mishima was very concerned with how he looked. He thought that after 45, his body would decline--and he wanted to go out looking perfect. When he was a child, he was sickly, so he wanted to go against that, build up his body. Essentially he was sensitive and insecure, but he wanted to present an image of being very strong, of the ruling, noble class. It makes him very easy to write about: He shapes himself in such a self-conscious manner.”

As for similarities between her work and the 1984 Paul Schrader film: “That was very visual and abstract, a beautiful movie. But I wanted to show more of the charming side. The movie couldn’t mention his wife or homosexuality (due to stipulations by Mishima’s widow). It was kind of a scholarly attempt at profundity. I was more interested in the story of someone who started out as voyeur. So it’s a collage of his life. He begins as the narrator, than takes center stage as the actor in his own drama.”

East West Players artistic director Mako has the title role.

Another literary figure, James Joyce, is the subject of T. S. Kerrigan’s first play, “Branches Among the Stars.” It opens Thursday at Ensemble Studio Theatre.

“It’s about his relationship with Nora (Barnacle, who, years later became his wife),” said director Lee Rose, “and it’s very much historically accurate. Yet it also doesn’t necessarily have to do with James Joyce. It’s about a young man who finds he has a problem with his upbringing, the place he was raised--a place that suffocates and has no possibility for self-expression. That’s the key to James Joyce. Ironically, when he finally did leave home, he ended up writing about nothing but that.”

Rose (a 1986 Drama-Logue winner for “The Triplet Collection”) added that those who might be put off by Joyce’s “lofty, intellectual” writing won’t find that in the play. “This is very human, accessible; it shows him . The story catches Joyce in 1934--historically he’s 21, but my actor (Matthew Sullivan) is a little older.” As for Nora, Rose said, “It turned out in real life, she wasn’t very pretty. From his letters you’d think she was this magnificent, beautiful creature. Susan (Rome, who plays the role) is much more attractive than Nora.”

LATE CUES: Also opening this week are “Hanna Speaks” at the Chamber Theatre, tonight; “Fortune and Men’s Eyes” at Deja Vu, Monday; “Talking About Talking: The Power to Change the World” at the Celebration Theatre; Tuesday; “Life After AIDS” at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Wednesday; Room for Theatre’s hit production of Preston Sturges’ “Strictly Dishonorable” reopening at the Matrix, Thursday; “Woodworks” at LACE, Friday, and “Damaged Goods” at the Olio, Saturday.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Christopher Reeve top-lines a revival of Tennessee Williams’ “Summer and Smoke,” at the Ahmanson through April 10. Carol Potter Eastman has replaced the pregnant Christine Lahti as the leading lady.

Said The Times’ Dan Sullivan: “Marshall W. Mason staged this production at the Ahmanson and his approach is ruthlessly practical, given the size of the house. Everything is as big and easy-to-read as possible.”

From Daryl H. Miller in the Daily News: “Mason has taken an old play and made it new again for the many viewers who have heretofore seen only doom and gloom productions of it.”

Said Drama-Logue’s Polly Warfield: “Inside ‘Summer and Smoke,’ there has been another play trying to get out. This, it seems, is the play.

Last, from the Hollywood Reporter’s Jay Reiner: “Mason’s production lacks a certain airy delicacy usually associated with this play . . . But it makes up for this loss by allowing the audience to feel compassion for its all-too-human characters because they are, in fact, all too human.”