REIMAGINING A CLASSIC
A contemporary take on iconic playwright Lao She’s Teahouse meets with mixed reviews, Chen Nan reports.
Classic theater productions’ adaptations are inevitably compared with the originals — for better or for worse. This perhaps explains the mixed reviews of contemporary director Meng Jinghui’s take on Teahouse, based on the original by novelist and playwright Lao She (1899-1966) — a household name in China.
Some say it’s difficult to understand since the script departs so much from the original.
Meng considers it “a spiritual visit to Lao She”.
Over 1,000 people attended the premiere at the Grand Theater in Zhejiang province’s Wuzhen town on Oct 18.
Lao She wrote Teahouse in 1956. Beijing People’s Art Theater debuted the work in 1958, and the play is still one of its most popular.
It depicts changes experienced by all walks of life during the final years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and the periods that follow, including the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and New China’s founding in 1949.
Meng swaps the Yutai Teahouse’s traditional architecture for a steel wheel that’s 19 meters long, 16 meters wide and 11 meters high. It was created by set designer Zhang Wu, who has collaborated with Meng on over 30 plays, and is meant to symbolize each character’s fate over time.
Film actor Wen Zhang plays the teahouse’s boss, Wang Lifa.
Meng’s three-hour play opens with Wang and 17 other performers clad in white tops and black pants giving monologues in turn as they sit on the wheel.
Musician Shao Yanpeng and Beijing-based rock band Nova Heart composed the music, featuring elements of rock, electronica and hiphop for Meng’s Teahouse.
“It is an artist’s most basic right to adapt classics into contemporary theater,” Meng says.
“A classic play isn’t a museum exhibit. It should be kept alive and it should continue to evolve. It’s an aesthetic adventure for audiences.”
Meng, a 53-year-old Beijing native and Central Academy of Drama graduate, has staged more than 40 works, including Rhinoceros in Love, Two Dogs, To Live and Amber.
His avant-garde, critical and humorous style is said to have enabled him to bring new vitality to Chinese theater.
He adapted Chinese writer Yu Hua’s acclaimed novel, To
Live, into a three-hour play of the same title in 2012. The director adapted The Four
Dreams by Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) playwright Tang Xianzu in 2016.
Meng first read the script of Teahouse as a university student and later watched the play at the Capital Theater. He also saw movies, TV dramas and books based on the work.
Meng worked with German dramaturg Sebastian Kaiser to not only adapt Teahouse into a contemporary context but also to generate a dialogue between Chinese and German artists.
“We spent six months reading the original texts of the play by Lao She before we started the rehearsals,” Kaiser says.
“We also visited the museum of Lao She and the Lao She Teahouse in Beijing. It was an exciting process. We decided not to be intimidated by the classic play, which is like a big mountain in front of us. It’s like a journey of seeking direction.”
Some might say that adaptations destroy the classic play, but what they did was to show respect for a theater heritage, he says.
“It is a salute to Lao She.” Kaiser says he kept asking Meng and the Chinese actors about the play’s characters and lines.
The dramaturg also asked himself questions — like, “Who is my favorite character?” — and realized the answers constantly change.
“We tried to understand Lao She, to understand Teahouse and to discover the meanings that were not shown to the audience,” Kaiser says.
Teahouse was staged at the Wuzhen Grand Theater from Oct 18 to Monday at the ongoing Sixth Wuzhen Theater Festival, which Meng co-founded. The festival, which runs through Sunday, features 109 performances of 29 plays from 17 countries.
Other classic plays adapted by international theater companies are running in Wuzhen, including Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry
Orchard, staged by Tianjin People’s Art Theater, and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot, performed by Radu Stanca National Theatre from Romania.
Teahouse will be staged at the Hangzhou Grand Theater from Wednesday to Nov 3, before it tours other Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Beijing.
"A classic play isn’t a museum exhibit. It should be kept alive and it should continue to evolve.”
Meng Jinghui, theater director