The Simple Truth, by Ken Yoshikawa, is an epic five-act verse tragicomedy written in the shadow of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. It tells a story of sovereignty, grief, and ecological preservation in a mythic and poetic setting of fictional Mediterranean city-state Bonavia, home to the notorious and renegade sea-captain Antonio.

 

Now that great King Virgillio has died, how shall Bonavia resist the greed of Illyria? How, amid such grief, shall Princess Ethelia challenge her brother, the newly crowned King Leonardo, against despair, collusion, and self-annihilation? The contest for the soul of their nation rests upon, of all things, a much fated wrestling match. Herein love, denial, nature, fear, joy, and power churn inward toward burning confrontation.