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last week, i saw what was quite possibly the worst play i've ever seen, secret love in peach blossom land. this in itself wouldn't merit much commentary if it weren't for the fact that the writer/director is a visiting professor here right now, and has been making a huge deal out of what an amazing play it is and what a genius he is to have written it. he was interviewed for the daily and among other things he said "This play has been considered structurally, well, some people have called it perfect." the thing is, it's not. it's really, really not. and i'm confused as to how it happened that anyone called it perfect. in the unlikely event that anyone actually plans to see the play and doesn't want to be spoiled, i'll talk more about it .
i should begin by saying that i think stan lai is a pompous ass [skip this paragraph if you don't want to read why]. i stage managed a play last year that he was theoretically advising on. he came reluctantly to one or two rehearsals, freely admitted that he hadn't bothered to read the play, and gave useless notes along the lines of 'why isn't this character in jail?' (but refused to accept 'because the playwright said so' or 'it doesn't actually matter for what is happening during the action of the play' or even 'perhaps he is on the run, since the playwright didn't specify the time relationship between those events and the ones happening now so maybe there hasn't been time for him to be arrested' as a response). he also criticized the director's casting choices in front of the actors and asked her to make changes to the blocking that would have completely destroyed the play-- when doing a play called bedbound, where one of the central characters is paralyzed from the waist down and has been trapped in a bed for years, it doesn't work for that character to get up and walk around. and when the director was being graded by the faculty on the production he told them that she was difficult to work with, didn't take criticism well, refused to integrate his notes, and had seen other productions of the play too many times, none of which was true. if she hadn't gone to another professor for help when she got no useful notes from her 'advisor', she could well have failed out of grad school because of him.
but laying all of that aside, i was interested to see this play. it is apparently (at least according to stan) one of the most important pieces of modern chinese theater. it is structured as two plays within a play. the exterior play is the story of two theatrical groups who are accidentally scheduled to rehearse on the same stage at the same time. one of the interior plays is a melodrama about lovers separated by the communist uprising in china in 1949, and the other is a sort of slapstick version of an old chinese folk/fairy tale. the problem i had is that, given this structure, i expect one of two things: either the exterior play should be the main one, with the two interior plays being used to underscore or contrast, or the interior plays should be the main elements, contrasting with each other to make some sort of statement.
neither of these things happened. the exterior play was unmotivated-- almost none of the characters got names or actual characterizations, the casts from the two interior plays didn't really interact but there were no ongoing relationships within the play casts either, the plot was 'two plays have to share rehearsal space' but there was no reason why the audience should care if anyone got to rehearse at all and no reason why this was a dramatic or interesting event, and because there was no real plot for the external play, the internal plays couldn't interact with it by illuminating character facets or actions or plotlines.
the interior plays themselves were poorly written but in a different way. the text was laughable--the play began with a scene from the melodrama, and i actually thought 'i feel so badly for the actors having to say those lines with a straight face'. it is obvious that they are both styles of theater that may be common in china but are not in the us--melodrama hasn't been a viable style for serious work for decades, and i don't even know what to call the fairy tale style other than 'bad'. and again, this wouldn't be a problem for me if stan hadn't made a big deal about his organic rehearsal process which allows him to modify his plays to fit the environment they're being performed in. i can forgive dull writing in a fairy tale play, since i assume it is aimed at children, but there was a five minute period while all of the characters were jumping around the stage pretending to kill themselves and screaming 'and i die' repeatedly for no apparent reason. i don't even know what the point of that was--it wasn't funny, really, but it wasn't anything else. and while the melodrama did have an interesting plot and the beginnings of actual characters (if melodramatic ones), we didn't see the entire play and so couldn't get too involved (and interestingly, the best scene from it was the last one, which was in a realist style and NOT a melodramatic one). there was no reason why the juxtaposition of these two specific plays should be meaningful in any way--thematically they were unrelated, there were no similar characters or settings or events. the only reason to have them together might be to say 'look at what diversity china has in its dramatic arts', but it's hard to call a play excellent for demonstrating what could be better done by taking to excellent examples of the genre and staging them together.
wow, and that's just the major structural flaws! then there was a bit in the melodrama where i the original text he contrasted mandarin with taiwanese--he changed the taiwanese to spanish and then, instead of just letting it go, had to point out in the exterior play that spanish doesn't have the same relationship to english as tiawanese does to mandarin. it's true, but pointing it out didn't help with suspension of disbelief! there was also a 'mysterious woman' wandering around dressed like virginia madsen from prairie home companion, in a trench coat, red shoes and a blond bobbed wig. because of the costuming choice, i thought she was death or something like virginia madsen was, but she kept asking for someone who no one knew, and then near the end accused someone who wasn't him of being him, had a screaming fit, and ripped off the blond wig to reveal that she was asian--clearly not death, and completely inexplicable. why dress her like that if not to make the reference? why have a plot point that is unrelated to everything else, makes no sense, and has neither explanation or resolution?
and the audience was actually sitting on bleachers upstage, looking toward a new proscenium arch and stage that had been built downstage between them and the normal (and by normal i mean built-in) audience seating. at the very end of the play, literally the last thirty seconds, the scenery scrim in the back of the new proscenium was flown up and the mysterious woman walked into the bright stage lights against a backdrop of the normal audience seating, throwing rose petals over herself.
i could continue, but i'm just making myself angry. and confused. in summary, very, very bad, don't go.
i should begin by saying that i think stan lai is a pompous ass [skip this paragraph if you don't want to read why]. i stage managed a play last year that he was theoretically advising on. he came reluctantly to one or two rehearsals, freely admitted that he hadn't bothered to read the play, and gave useless notes along the lines of 'why isn't this character in jail?' (but refused to accept 'because the playwright said so' or 'it doesn't actually matter for what is happening during the action of the play' or even 'perhaps he is on the run, since the playwright didn't specify the time relationship between those events and the ones happening now so maybe there hasn't been time for him to be arrested' as a response). he also criticized the director's casting choices in front of the actors and asked her to make changes to the blocking that would have completely destroyed the play-- when doing a play called bedbound, where one of the central characters is paralyzed from the waist down and has been trapped in a bed for years, it doesn't work for that character to get up and walk around. and when the director was being graded by the faculty on the production he told them that she was difficult to work with, didn't take criticism well, refused to integrate his notes, and had seen other productions of the play too many times, none of which was true. if she hadn't gone to another professor for help when she got no useful notes from her 'advisor', she could well have failed out of grad school because of him.
but laying all of that aside, i was interested to see this play. it is apparently (at least according to stan) one of the most important pieces of modern chinese theater. it is structured as two plays within a play. the exterior play is the story of two theatrical groups who are accidentally scheduled to rehearse on the same stage at the same time. one of the interior plays is a melodrama about lovers separated by the communist uprising in china in 1949, and the other is a sort of slapstick version of an old chinese folk/fairy tale. the problem i had is that, given this structure, i expect one of two things: either the exterior play should be the main one, with the two interior plays being used to underscore or contrast, or the interior plays should be the main elements, contrasting with each other to make some sort of statement.
neither of these things happened. the exterior play was unmotivated-- almost none of the characters got names or actual characterizations, the casts from the two interior plays didn't really interact but there were no ongoing relationships within the play casts either, the plot was 'two plays have to share rehearsal space' but there was no reason why the audience should care if anyone got to rehearse at all and no reason why this was a dramatic or interesting event, and because there was no real plot for the external play, the internal plays couldn't interact with it by illuminating character facets or actions or plotlines.
the interior plays themselves were poorly written but in a different way. the text was laughable--the play began with a scene from the melodrama, and i actually thought 'i feel so badly for the actors having to say those lines with a straight face'. it is obvious that they are both styles of theater that may be common in china but are not in the us--melodrama hasn't been a viable style for serious work for decades, and i don't even know what to call the fairy tale style other than 'bad'. and again, this wouldn't be a problem for me if stan hadn't made a big deal about his organic rehearsal process which allows him to modify his plays to fit the environment they're being performed in. i can forgive dull writing in a fairy tale play, since i assume it is aimed at children, but there was a five minute period while all of the characters were jumping around the stage pretending to kill themselves and screaming 'and i die' repeatedly for no apparent reason. i don't even know what the point of that was--it wasn't funny, really, but it wasn't anything else. and while the melodrama did have an interesting plot and the beginnings of actual characters (if melodramatic ones), we didn't see the entire play and so couldn't get too involved (and interestingly, the best scene from it was the last one, which was in a realist style and NOT a melodramatic one). there was no reason why the juxtaposition of these two specific plays should be meaningful in any way--thematically they were unrelated, there were no similar characters or settings or events. the only reason to have them together might be to say 'look at what diversity china has in its dramatic arts', but it's hard to call a play excellent for demonstrating what could be better done by taking to excellent examples of the genre and staging them together.
wow, and that's just the major structural flaws! then there was a bit in the melodrama where i the original text he contrasted mandarin with taiwanese--he changed the taiwanese to spanish and then, instead of just letting it go, had to point out in the exterior play that spanish doesn't have the same relationship to english as tiawanese does to mandarin. it's true, but pointing it out didn't help with suspension of disbelief! there was also a 'mysterious woman' wandering around dressed like virginia madsen from prairie home companion, in a trench coat, red shoes and a blond bobbed wig. because of the costuming choice, i thought she was death or something like virginia madsen was, but she kept asking for someone who no one knew, and then near the end accused someone who wasn't him of being him, had a screaming fit, and ripped off the blond wig to reveal that she was asian--clearly not death, and completely inexplicable. why dress her like that if not to make the reference? why have a plot point that is unrelated to everything else, makes no sense, and has neither explanation or resolution?
and the audience was actually sitting on bleachers upstage, looking toward a new proscenium arch and stage that had been built downstage between them and the normal (and by normal i mean built-in) audience seating. at the very end of the play, literally the last thirty seconds, the scenery scrim in the back of the new proscenium was flown up and the mysterious woman walked into the bright stage lights against a backdrop of the normal audience seating, throwing rose petals over herself.
i could continue, but i'm just making myself angry. and confused. in summary, very, very bad, don't go.
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