Noda Map: -320°F review“Sci-fi, myth and a smattering of truth”
REVIEWS
JUL 6, 2026
10:20
BY OLIVER JONES
SADLER’S WELLS, LONDON
Visually extraordinary show about science’s attempts to outdo God from Japanese writer and director Hideki Noda
Fast, fun, visually ravishing (Isao Tsuge is listed as beauty director) and vast in its thematic scope, this latest show from Nagasaki-born writer and director Hideki Noda conflates sci-fi, myth and a smattering of truth to examine science’s quest to uncover, and indeed improve “life’s true form”.
Presented in Japanese with English surtitles by Noda’s Tokyo company Noda Map, it fuses kabuki, dance and Western theatre traditions to probe ideas including genetic memory (unproved), bio-technical body enhancement (happening now) and perfect-banana cultivation (genuinely alarming). Minus 320°F is the temperature at which human heads are stored in cryogenic facilities.
Maybe it’s all too fast, while the show’s interval-less running time sometimes makes it difficult to digest the relentless, madcap plot. Noda himself (a super-energised 70-year-old) plays a live-wire, dreadlocked assistant to biotech pioneer Professor Kyuri (an imperious Eri Fukatsu), searching for a legendary “angel bone”, believed to hold the secret of existence.
Meanwhile, aged scientist Faust (a magnificently world-weary Isao Hashizume) makes a pact with Mephisto (a beautifully poised Suzu Hirose) to prolong his life in order to pursue his theory of “bone conduction” – born out when the hand of Kyuri’s other assistant (named simply Help, and played with comedic gusto by Sadawo Abe) begins to vibrate in sympathy with an angel bone on a dinosaur dig.
Before we know it, Help is using his genetic memory to hop back and forth in time, encountering power-mad pharma bosses, dancing skeletons and a Pied Piper (Koji Ohkura) who “opens Pandora’s Box” in his search for proof of benevolence.
Noda, who has been awarded an OBE, continuously delights in savvy audience asides and word play such as “DNAngels” and “arcane angels”. A moment where Help orally interprets for the onstage signer (MISAKI) is particularly witty. But it’s his fluid, disciplined direction of a huge, versatile cast that stuns, especially in wordless sequences including a pre-show scene in which palaeontologists excavate assiduously on all-fours, their mimed brushing movements presaging the later use of sign language.
Set designer Yukio Horio transports us from prehistoric cave dwellings adorned with ancient art to the top floors of glittering skyscrapers, glinting see-through plastic curtains drawn on shimmering silver rails heightening the celestial effect.
Costume designer Kodue Hibino adds glorious kitsch and vibrant colour, while her hairstyles are wildly inventive throughout. Choreographer Shigehiro Ide provides gyrating bananas and some astonishing “reverse-video” backwards walking.
But for all the hi-energy glee, the piece ends on a subdued note when Ohkura’s Piper turns a flamethrower on a host of “diseased” angels. The playbill mentions the Yamayuri-en incident of 2016, when 19 disabled people were murdered by a care-home employee who deemed them unable to “be active in society”: a true, twisted outcome of the pursuit of human perfection.
https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/noda-map-320f-review-sadlers-wells-london