“[Forgiveness is] blessed with some remarkable performances. It’s hard to believe that [Jeff] Lillico played the broadly comic rock-star-like Shakespeare in Something Rotten! last season. The role of Ralph requires him to traverse a punishing emotional and physical arc and he hits all the notes.

[Yoshie] Bancroft is endearing as Mitsue as she navigates girlhood, the harshness of the war years, and the challenges of raising two very Canadian boys.

Michael Man turns in another rock solid performance as Hideo, Mitsue’s husband. Playwright [Hiro] Kanagawa takes on two roles. As Kato, the sadistic but philosophically conflicted commandant of Ralph’s POW camp, he is chilling.”

Kanagawa’s 2023 adaptation is framed as a memory play, introduced by Ralph and Mitsue in fourth wall-breaking addresses at the top of the show’s two acts. It’s an interesting narrative device that I was disappointed not to see satisfyingly resolved at the end of the play…

The production’s synergy between design and staging is its strongest point — Kaileigh Krysztofiak’s lighting, Chien’s projections, Anita Nittoly’s fight direction, and Stephanie Graham’s choreography combine to create intense combat sequences. The incorporation of historic radio broadcasts and images during depictions of some of the war’s most pivotal events, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, illustrate the intensely felt impacts of this well-known history on the play’s characters. Sound designer Olivia Wheeler and composer Allison Lynch’s soundscapes and cinematic scoring also lend much emotional weight to the play’s many settings.

“There are no weak links in the production, painted in tender strokes by Arima and his design team. Lorenzo Savoini’s set and costumes ably suggest a slurry of interconnected eras, complemented by Cindy Mochizuki’s animations, which capture a fuzzy, childlike snapshot of lives long gone. Allison Lynch’s musical compositions, too, add a filmic quality to this enormous story – it’s wonderful to see Lynch and Arima work together on a Stratford stage. (The two often collaborate at Theatre Calgary, where Arima serves as artistic director.)”