Renowned Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa uses the traditional Japanese theatrical style Kabuki to tell William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Working for the first time with two of Kabuki’s greatest performers, Onoe Kikugoro VII and his son Onoe Kikunosuke V, Ninagawa relocates Shakespeare’s well-loved comedy Twelfth Night to a fantastical and colourful world set in Japan’s historical past.

Through stylised gestures, speech and music; executed with precision timing, Kabuki brings a new energy to Twelfth Night’s comedic moments. Ninagawa’s striking staging reflects a fanciful but nonetheless quintessential Japanese world producing a Twelfth Night of timeless beauty.

Twelfth Night, Ninagawa’s first collaboration with Schochiku Grand Kabuki, marks the director’s sixth visit to bite, his eighth visit to the Barbican and 21 years of working with UK producer Thelma Holt. His previous productions for bite include Hamlet, The Modern Noh Plays and Coriolanus.

In addition to his work with bite, Ninagawa has collaborated with the Royal Shakespeare Company presenting King Lear in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, and Titus Andronicus, which was part of the RSC Complete Works Festival.

Twelfth Night is performed in Japanese with English surtitles, and is suitable for theatregoers aged 14 and older.