To describe Vanishing Point as a Glasgow theatre company is both true and misleading. True, because artistic director Matthew Lenton and his collaborators base themselves a short walk from Central Station. Misleading, because they never do a show in isolation. There is always outside artistic input. This is the company that was working with Italian actors on The Metamorphosis just as reports came in of a mystery virus in Rome and Milan. With its opening cancelled in a locked-down Cesena, the show premiered in Scotland only to be halted by the pandemic.

No surprise, then, to find Lenton turning to Japan. He is not only devising a bilingual show based on short stories by Haruki Murakami, but also working with four Japanese actors alongside company regulars from Scotland. Taking its name from a short story in First Person Singular, the author’s 2020 collection, Confessions Of A Shinagawa Monkey has become what Lenton describes as a ‘thrilling whodunnit set among the mysterious mountains of Japan and subterranean tunnels of Tokyo.’

The meeting of cultures benefits everyone. ‘Their work mentality and stamina is extraordinary,’ says Lenton of the Japanese actors. What has he learned from them in return? ‘That maybe we should all think a bit more before we speak,’ says the director who, true to form, is in Milan for the premiere of another Vanishing Point show, Darwin, Nevada, which is heading our way in 2026. And what have they learned from him? ‘You’d have to ask them, but that perhaps they don’t need to think so much before they speak.’

Either way, the Confessions Of A Shinagawa Monkey premiere was a sell-out success on its debut at Yokohama’s Kanagawa Arts Theatre in November. ‘The responses were lovely,’ says Lenton. ‘Yoko Murakami [the author’s wife] came to see it and said it should transfer to big theatres in Tokyo. So we must have done something right.’

Confessions Of A Shinagawa Monkey is on at Tramway, Glasgow, Saturday 22 February–Saturday 1 March and Dundee Rep, Thursday 6–Saturday 8 March.