Ancient ghost tales come to life in ‘Kaidan Chibusa No Enoki’

How do you tell good Kabuki from bad Kabuki? Chances are, you know it when you see it, and New Yorkers have been seeing more of the Japanese art — with its heavily stylized movement and cross-dressing male actors — in the last decade, via Heisei Nakamura-za. The venerable Japanese troupe kicked off the Lincoln Center Festival and its third NY appearance Monday with Kaidan Chibusa No Enoki (The Ghost Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree), a rollicking melodrama based on a 19th-century ghost tale. The story concerns a villainous samurai (Nakamura Shido II) who murders a famed artist because he covets his beautiful wife. In a tour-de-force turn, Nakamura Kankuro VI, one of the sons of the troupe’s late founder, assumes three roles: the artist, who returns as a ghost; his hapless servant and a thief. Nakamura Shichinosuke II, the founder’s other son, plays the preyed-upon wife.