Too long.
This play was way too long. I started nodding off in the later scenes.
Does this mean Edward Lam's not that great a director? Nope. It
means he's got vision.
You see, I've been pondering our theatre scene a while, and I've
realised that while we've got a bunch of young, competent directors
who've got great rapport with actors, not that many of them are
really driven by vision; not that many have some kind of ambitious belief
in a transformative new kind of drama they want to create.
Lam's got that kind of vision: in fact, What Is Man? is only
the first part of the grand dramatic cycle he wants to create: he's
planning four contemporary interpretations of the four great Chinese
classic novels, each one to be created over the next four years. This
first work's based on The Water Margin, a 16th century novel
attributed to Shi Naian, relating the stories of 108 Song Dynasty outlaws
as they take refuge by the riverside marshlands. As a thematic focus,
he's chosen the issue of masculinity: how, he asks, might the heroes
from this classic text still resonate with our present definitions of
manhood?
To explore these ideas, he and playwright Li-Hua Chen end up relying
heavily on the genre of the gangster movie, which they see as a contemporary
genre of texts running parallel to The Water Margin. Thus the
play works on a premise of nine men, each coincidentally bearing the
names of heroes from the novel, auditioning for a gangster movie through
a game of role-play: over and over again, the scenario is played out
where a young gangster runs off with his gang-leader's girlfriend. Sometimes
it's a car chase, sometimes it's a Mexican stand-off, in one case it's
the girlfriend who's run off with the young gangster's girlfriend, and
both gangsters are confusedly trying to determine whether to execute
the women. In between, we have dialogues between the unseen director
and the actors, and monologues by the actors exploring modern day versions
of their archetypal characters: the wanderer, the gambler, the thief,
the murderer.
To be honest, I'm not sure if the show really works as a drama
of ideas. I didn't attain that much new insight into the complexities
of the contemporary masculinity (yes, yes, it's embattled, and
there's a weird homoerotic element occasionally, no surprises
there), and occasionally the treatment's kinda immature (family
jewels = penis jokes? And we're supposed to be enlightened when
we find out a guy kills people because he's impotent?).
But two things really win over the viewer in this production: aesthetics
and imagination. Lam really knows how to fill a stage, whether it's
simply with a solo figure with a projection of a tiger's face, a full-on
ensemble tableau or a semi-naturalistic setup of a streetlamp and car
wreck in the distance. And the range of dramatic elements he pulls into
this work is truly impressive - live video, ballroom dancing, shadow
play, musical chairs, swordfighting, crosstalk. The genres battle and
blend: slapstick comedy follows hot on the heels of psychodrama; naturalism
is answered with absurdist hand puppetry.
For all the brilliance of the work, the play does exhaust itself eventually
- and considering it's three and a half hours long with no plot or constant
characters, it's amazing this doesn't happen sooner. The events of the
play reflect (or perhaps engender?) this, with a scene of a drunken
karaoke party gradually breaking up in the wee hours of the night, its
members almost too tired to stand. Even the omniscient director is shown
to have disappeared in later scenes, leaving one of the actors to audition
himself in a one-man schizophrenic soliloquy. Perhaps intentionally,
the work loses its way, embracing uncertainty.
But as I write, I'm starting to realise how closely the figure of the
director is linked with that of the outlaw: both creation and rebellion
are interpreted as masculine acts of agency. All the characters, whether
describing their lives as actors or performing monologues as outlaws,
express a sense of dissatisfaction with the everyday role of the man
as breadwinner, householder, husband, father, son. Desperate or triumphant,
every character desires to be a hero, one who stands out of the crowd,
yet, like the heroes of The Water Margin, these figures tend
to be doomed, without futures.
Even the opening scene, with actor Sebastien Shien in contemporary
dress performing the Beijing opera role of Lin Chong fleeing by night,
projects a sense of pathos: for all the vigour of his acrobatics, he
looks lonely and small on stage, shorn of the glory of his warrior costume
- and he becomes even more pathetic when the director interrogates him
on why he thinks this is a fitting audition piece for a gangster movie.
All masculine acts seem destined to face erosion: even the grand project
of the director must decay into confusion. But there is still the vision
that lies at the core of the drama, fueling it, even if it goes astray.
The play's closing scene, which the playwright dubs as the iconic
moment of the work, is titled "The Director's Dream: The
First Man and His Desire", featuring the bare-chested actors collapsing
and moving in a pool of abstract video as the director's voice
sweeps over them, describing the birth, history, death and rebirth of
the universe: pyramids, pagodas, world wars. It's a very strange,
yet deeply beautiful moment, reducing the men and women of the play
to androgynous beings, full of potential.
What Is Man? inspires: it puts down roots through history
and tradition while expressing a very contemporary sense of malaise
and confusion about identity. Though it's not a perfect play, I'm hoping
the Esplanade will play host to Lam's more recent production, What
Is Fantasy, based on The Journey to the West, and future
works in this series.
And of course, I'm aware that there's no basis for comparison - after
all, Edward Lam's a veteran director, with his pick of actors from Taiwan
and Hong Kong an international touring circuit of Sinologues - but it's
my wish that more young directors here can gather the guts and resources
to create their wild visions, on a grandiose scale. Because it's not
just the ability to combine actors and text and tech that makes a good
performance. It's the resolute belief that one has an idea worth witnessing
on stage. That heroic conviction.
First Impression
A truly beautiful, splendorously imaginative exploration of the notion
of Chinese manhood, springboarding off the premise of nine men with
the names of Water Margin heroes auditioning for parts in a
gangster movie. Through absurd re-enactments, bone-chilling monologues,
swordfighting crosstalks and mass movement pieces, the piece unites
the past and the present, brings together Beijing opera acrobatics and
Hong Kong genre film and karaoke and the stock market, a strange testament
to this image of heroism in the Chinese male as an act of both violence
and performance: a beautiful yet destructive tradition of testosterone
and careless misogyny. It's utterly amazing what director Edward Lam
pulls from his sleeves to confound the eye - live video projections,
ballroom dancing, shadow play, musical chairs. But his talent brings
with it a dose of self-indulgence, too: we keep flogging on the same
basic thematic tropes until they become dead tired, dragging out what
could have been a piquant, excellent show to three and a half hours
- way longer than necessary. |
"The genres battle and blend: slapstick comedy follows hot on the
heels of psychodrama; naturalism is answered with absurdist hand puppetry"
Credits
Director: Edward Lam
Playwright/Theatre Advisor: Li-Hua Chen
Creation: Edward Lam and Chi-Yao Wang
Executive Direction: Chyi-Wen Yang
Stage manager: Vicky Wang
Producer: Tsui-Yu Hsieh
Executive Producer: Chien Tung and Siu-Fai Lai
Production Manager: Frank Yeung
Set Designer: Yau-Wing Chan
Lighting Designer: Uno Lai
Costume and Image Designer: Kary Kwok
Multimedia Designer: John Wong and Pong Lam
Composer: Chien-Chi Chien
Movement Coach: Yuan-Cheng Sun and Wei-Chia Su
Sound Designer: Chak-Ming Chung
Cast: David Wang, Hung-Chang Chu, Chien-Chang Lee,
Hugh Shih, Ethan Wei, Tzu-Yi Mo, Joseph Chang, Han Chang, Sebastien
Shien, Heng-Yin Chou, Yu-Lin Ling and Ying-Shine Hsieh
|
