Tragedy given a twist
- Source: Global Times
- [10:49 June 25 2010]
- Comments
Wu Hsing-Kuo as General Au-Shu and Wei Hai-Ming as Lady Au-Shu. Photo: Courtesy of CLTT
By Hu Bei
Despite the stigma of "the Scottish play," the great bard's work has seen no end to adaptation (for example, Orson Welles' "Voodoo" Macbeth and Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood), but The Kingdom of Desire has turned a few heads by turning Shakespeare's masterpiece into a Peking Opera.
Tonight and tomorrow night, The Kingdom of Desire, a Contemporary Legend Theater of Taiwan (CLTT) production, is set to wow Shanghai audiences with its unique take on the Elizabethan play.
Since its premiere at the Taipei Municipal Social Education Hall in December 1986, The Kingdom has garnered international acclaim, notably at the Royal National Theater in London in 1990 and the Avignon Festival in France in 1998, and this will be the work's first performance in Shanghai.
Shakespeare meets Peking
As one might guess The Kingdom, it is not set in Scotland in the Middle Ages, but instead it takes place in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770BC-256BC), using General Au-Shu as Macbeth who is in the company of his faithful deputy Meng Ting.
After meeting a "ghost in the mountains" who foresees Au-Shu's ascendancy to the throne and Meng's son's usurpation, Au-Shu plans to take the throne with the help of his wife. Regicide, intrigue and war ensue as usual.
Wu Hsing-Kuo, the director of The Kingdom, adapted the play for Peking Opera but hopes to keep the original nature of the Western tragedy.
"Peking Opera usually portrays virtue and sings of high spirits with poetic justice along with strictly designed performance rules," said Wu. "Shakespeare discusses human weakness in a reality created by love and hatred, characters tortured by ambition and then by guilt."
But all things considered, the two styles really may not be that different.
"In some important aspects, Shakespeare is well suited to the Chinese stage. He wrote most of his plays in verse, which is very similar to the arias in Peking Opera. The stage is also designed to be relatively bare, and the actors must give their all and make the best use of their talents."
Wu added that it took a year to write The Kingdom and to turn the verse into Peking Opera-style poetry. "At the very beginning, it was written into a nearly six-hour show, which was too long to stage, so we finally edited it into two and a half hours."
Wu, himself plays the lead role of An-Shu and portrays him as a conflicted force of constant ambition. As well as the chilling hand-washing aria, An-Shu's death scene features an amazing acrobatic feat with a back flip from a 10- foot high wall.
Wei Hai-Ming, actress of the Hai Kuang Chinese Opera Company in Taiwan, plays An- Shu's wife, Lady An-Shu.
It will certainly surprise audiences that Wei throws away some of the traditional movements of Peking Opera, as she uses a specially designed body language for the role.
"My palms face the sky with my hands at different levels in order to stress the character's ambitions," said Wei. She said that she has kept the snake-like movements usually associated with female characters in Peking Opera, but that she added her own particular spice to Lady An-Shu's bloody ambitions.
"When plotting the murder with my husband, my steps are emphasized, accompanying the character's vicious statements."
The actors' costumes, laden with heavy colors and smoky beams of lights, fill the stage with the brooding dark beauty normally accompanying Macbeth. The solemn atmosphere of percussion crescendos add to that sense of dread.
Breaking the mold
Wu established the CLTT in 1968 and The Kingdom, this troupe's first work, was regarded as pioneering for Peking Opera in Taiwan.
At that time, a group of Peking Opera players in Taiwan, including Wu himself, were keenly aware of the decline of this historic opera form. They began to think seriously about how to integrate this ancient Chinese art form with modern theater.
"Since I grew up learning Peking Opera, I realized that every day our audiences grew smaller and smaller," said Wu. "Times were changing. So I had to ask myself how I could make Peking Opera flourish once again."
Wu studied theater at the Chinese Culture University and was familiar with Western drama. "We wanted to use masterpieces because everyone understands them already, and Shakespeare kept popping up in my mind."
A good idea indeed, but the challenges for the change were immense.
"We had nothing except the idea. The script was written by a college student, and the sets and costumes were produced by volunteers out of their own money."
A senior Peking Opera actor in Taiwan and Wu's own Chinese opera teacher criticized Wu for his attempts, called him a "fool" and their relationship thereafter was damaged.
Fortunately, the following success of The Kingdom comforted this group of experimenters.
And over the last two decades, the company has produced a series of plays interpreting canonical Western dramas, from Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest to Greek tragedies such as Medea and Oresteia.
In 2001, when The Kingdom of Desire was performed in Beijing for the first time, Wu Jing, the president of China National Peking Opera Company described it as, "a new Peking Opera with a theater style that keeps the essence of the art but with an exploration of an avant-garde modern element, which may become a trend of reform for Peking Opera."
Date: Today and tomorrow, 7:15 pm
Venue: Shanghai Grand Theater 上海大剧院
Address: 300 People's Avenue
人民大道300号
Tickets: 60 to 500 yuan
Call 6217-2426 for details
