Review: YAMATO at Peacock Theatre

Stuart King 18 May, 2026, 11:39

The elite troupe of Japanese drummers YAMATO have once again landed at the Peacock Theatre where for the next 3 weeks they’ll deliver their new show Hito no Chikara (which roughly translates as The Power of Human Strength) to an impressively diverse demographic among the hugely appreciative audience. In a spectacle which deploys little drums, big drums, small brass hand held cymbals, tight sequences, play fights and plenty of comedy moments, there is a surprising amount aside from complex drumming to entertain those who venture to the Sadler’s Wells satellite venue in the central Holborn district.

Photo by Hiroshi Seo

Founded in 1993 by Masa Ogawa, at any given performance you will witness 5 men and 4 women performers drawn from the core troupe of 12 athletes (Naoki Ekihiro, Akiko Ogawa, Jo Nakamura, Marika Nito, Kenta Ono, Mika Miyazaki, Tatsuya Iwaki, Nene Miura, Daisuke Jonai, Genta Ogawa, Misaki Yoshioka, Wakaba Sudani, Honoka Yamaguchi, Natsu Shimomura, Kuuto Otsuka and Sei Shimomura) who live and train together at their base at Asuka Village, south east of Osaka in Japan. Each member of the disciplined group work their socks-off displaying the passion they have for their art. The complex routines and sequences demonstrate a dedication which is difficult to fault and the troupe’s interactions both with each other and the audience, are borne of a love for what they do and a desire to share the experience and fun.

Performing in front a projection screen which is redolent of much historical Far Eastern symbolism, there are also aerial backdrop sequences of Japanese landscapes near Asuka in the Nara Prefecture of the Yamato Plain. In them, you can clearly see members of the group climbing steep inclines as part of their daily training routines. In his address to the audience which closes the first half, one of the performers attempts to describe the word “intense”. Eschewing an English lexicon, he resorts to facial expressions combined with his body to convey the necessary. It is at this point that you realise that drumming and the training required to perform a two hour non-stop set on a daily basis, clearly provides the performers with an incredible physical work-out, with each of the artists possessing the sort of lean and ripped torso which most of us in the audience can only ever dream of achieving.

Such is YAMATO’s appeal and reputation, after London, the troupe embark on an extensive tour of both Spain and Germany until August and then after further performances to home audiences in Japan, they return to Europe in November to play a further 15 dates at venues in Finland, Poland and the Czech Republic. The performance lasts 2 hours including a 20 minute interval.