First seen in the Old Fitzroy Theatre in 2023, Hisashi Inoue’s play is expertly scaled up for the Seymour Centre, its intimacy and impact retained.

The play is formed from a series of conversations between a young woman and her widower father. Mitsue (Mayu Iwasaki) is a 23-year-old librarian, weighed down by worries and unable to get on with her life. Her doting dad, Takezo (Shingo Usami) has no end of advice for her, on everything from cooking to dating to fashion.

We could be watching the pilot episode of a situation comedy – were it not for the fact that this is 1948 and Mitsue lives in Hiroshima. It has been three years since the city experienced the hitherto unknown of an atomic bomb attack. Little wonder she flinches during a thunderstorm.

The Face of Jizo: Mayu Iwasaki and Shingo Usami. Photo © Phil Erbacher

Co directed by Usami and David Lynch, The Face of Jizo (in translation by Roger Pulvers) gives up its central conceit – that dad and daughter are separated by far more than world-view – very gently. Resist the temptation to guess ahead and you may find...