Ebizo Ichikawa XI is 28 years old, the newest star of Kabuki Theatre, member of a dynasty of illustrious actor/dancers that stretches back to the late 17th century. He is vastly popular with a young audience in Japan, much feted and accorded pop-idol status. He comes to Sadler’s Wells trailing clouds of publicity, with a double bill in which we may assess something of the nature and quality of his artistry.

He appears first in the female (onnagata) role of the Wisteria Maiden, exploring the emotional range of a solo dance that reflects on the contrasting states of love expressed and rejected (and, delightfully, of tipsiness) in the gorgeous setting and costuming that are part of Kabuki’s language.

Ebizo is undeniably skilled, alert in manner, but I missed a quality of inevitability that suggests there is no other way the feelings and movements could be better expressed, which I have seen in performances by a supreme onnagata artist, Nakamura Ganjiro III. (His solo during the British Museum’s Kabuki exhibition last autumn, in which he played a travelling courtesan impersonating a man – a treble bluff, a role within a role within a role – was one of the greatest dance performances I have ever seen.)

Ebizo’s youth, even his youthful physique, seem to me slightly at odds with the style of the piece, which is sophisticated and wide- ranging in imagery.

His identity was more clearly to be appreciated in the tragic Kasane, which forms the second half of the evening. He plays the masterless, murderous samurai Yoemon, who seduces and kills the young woman Kasane, thereby repeating history, since he had earlier killed her father and seduced her mother. The mother’s ghost (limping, facially deformed) takes possession of her daughter and exacts revenge on Yoemon. It is a drama whose ferocity and anguish are marvellously controlled by Kabuki dance and music, by the calligraphy of style itself: intensity of feeling is the ink on the brush that shapes each ideogram, each character. In the poses of Kabuki style, in the formalities of step and action that strip away everything save the central truth of a situation, Ebizo makes a commanding figure – fury, devious guilt, passion, all are there – as exponent of his family’s signature aragoto (“wild”) style of performance.

No less remarkable the appearance of Kamejiro Ichikawa II as the tragic Kasane, an interpretation of extreme clarity and distinction, pitiable and terrifying. The musicians in these performances are exceptionally fine. ★★★★☆

Tel +44 870 737 7737