How Shanghai adds its twist to the classics

• Source: Global Times
• [09:26 July 22 2010]
• Comments

A scene from Doubt. Photo: Courtesy of Chen Li

By Hu Bei

Nowadays in the theater world of Shanghai, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie and Albert Camus compete for the box office under the generic title "Western classics." But, like many things, after they arrive in Shanghai they lose their Western flavor and become quirkily oriental.

This month Chinese versions of Albert Camus' The Plague, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew have swept across the city stages and Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced is about to open next week.

And then, keeping in step with "The English Thriller Queen" Christie, the Chinese version of Doubt, will return for a second season.

Doubt is an American drama about a nun who has suspicions about a priest she works with. It both won a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize and has been turned into an Oscar nominated film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

This Chinese production premiered in Shanghai in May, and attracted full houses throughout its season.

"It is not difficult for a Western theatergoer in Shanghai to find a classic or a play work from their own country, but most of them have an added flavor from China or Shanghai," Chen Li, a public relations officer with the Shanghai Drama Art Center (SDAC) said.

"Shanghai is a very international city, and, at the same time, it is also a city with deep-rooted local consciousness."

"It is vital for the city to stage classic plays from overseas but if we only import the exotic types of theater and do not add local color we have to ask ourselves if we have the ability and maturity to handle foreign classics by ourselves. Or if we just present local original works we have to ignore the audiences who want to see Western classics?" Chen asked.

The balance between presenting great plays and classical drama from overseas and adapting them for local audiences is hard to define. Often this depends on the work itself.

Revamped work

Chen cited the recent production of The Taming of the Shrew as a good example of a classical work revamped for Shanghai audiences. This was "a foreign classic with a Chinese flavor," Chen said.

The Chinese version of The Taming of the Shrew was co-produced by the SDAC and Britain's The New Theater (TNT). The director, Paul Stebbings, is the artistic director of TNT, and the actors were all Chinese performers from the SDAC.

Paul Stebbings said that the reason why they adapted this comedy into Chinese was because "Shanghai is a city of conflict and that matches the battle between men and women in this play, and also of the battles between East and West, tradition and modernity. It is an interesting place for The Taming of the Shrew to appear and it strikes unpredictable sparks."

Apart from Shakespeare, in recent years, Shanghai has seen more productions of Agatha Christie's works than just about anywhere else in the world. The Mousetrap Theater Club is a private theater studio in Shanghai which every year reworks one of Christie's thrillers into a Chinese version.

Since its premiere in 2003, the studio's production of The Mousetrap has had an annual return season, clocking up hundreds of performances and breaking box office records although it has a long way to go to match the original production which opened in London in 1952 and is still playing after 24,000 performances.