PRODUCTION King Lear [Lier zai ci]
Data Type：review
Author：Oestreich, James R.
Title：Poor King Lear, Alone but in a Crowd
Source：New York Times
Place：New York
Date：2007/7/14
Language：English
Abstract：The author praises Wu Hsing-kuo's virtuosity and reads into the play's personal meanings.
How do you say “Gesamtkunstwerk” in Mandarin? Chinese opera has always been a “total artwork” of sorts: comedy or dark drama with heightened speech and song, choreographed gesture often bordering on dance, acrobatics and costumes that may be intricate works of art in themselves.
And that was just the starting point for Wu Hsing-kuo’s remarkable one-man King Lear, which the Lincoln Center Festival presented at the Rose Theater on Thursday evening. This production expanded codified Chinese opera style to include Buddhist chant, contemporary music and electronics, and Western elements — beyond Shakespeare’s play itself, of course. In a spirited turn as the Fool, Mr. Wu inserted a visual joke based on a major scale and, in a fast-paced bit of doggerel, even a mention of New York.
But all this was merely a backdrop for a probing psychological study of wavering identity. As it turns out, this production has deep personal meaning for Mr. Wu, having originated in 2000 — the most difficult time in his life, he writes in a program note.
Mr. Wu, who founded the Contemporary Legend Theater of Taiwan in 1986, shut it down in 1998 after artistic disputes within the company and repeated rejections from theaters. “What Lear expresses was akin to my situation back then,” he writes. “The entire environment made me feel oppressed.”
Happily, he reinstated the Contemporary Legend Theater in 2001. It went on to do a gripping version of Macbeth at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. two years ago, and it presented sterling productions of traditional Chinese fare, The Tipsy Concubine and Farewell My Concubine, at Lincoln Center on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
Unlike the Macbeth, which — exotic as it was — unfolded in more or less linear fashion, King Lear is largely free-form. Act I, the part Mr. Wu produced in 2000, is an extended mad scene in which Lear’s identity progressively disintegrates, literally when Mr. Wu removes the scraggly hair and drooping beard to reveal his own head and face — as himself? As the ghost of Lear? It is never quite clear.
Act II becomes a sea of identities as Mr. Wu virtuosically runs through the drama’s personages (if the dog qualifies as such). They include the Fool, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, Gloucester, Edmund and Edgar. Mr. Wu uses costumes for the early roles, quickly changing onstage, but goes on to show how little he needs them. The climactic encounter between Gloucester and Edgar is a tour de force, with Mr. Wu, relying on little more than mannerisms of body and speech, alternating characters as rapidly as the dialogue shifts.
Mr. Wu injects himself again at the end of the second act, and the fusing of his personality with Lear’s carries through much of the third, until Lear’s ghost (or whoever) is lifted skyward but left hanging in the air.
Like the costumes, the trappings mattered little in the end. The set was minimal, with craggy rock formations and ruined monuments littered about the stage, and the action took place mostly in the dark of night.
Two musicians made shadowy appearances onstage, but for the rest, attention was riveted squarely on Mr. Wu, in whatever guise. So it was startling when, after the curtain had fallen, it lifted again to a stage populated by musicians. But the recognition was deserved, for both here and in the concubine operas earlier, this was a hardy band with a lot of character, including a tangy, sometimes raunchy edge to the lead strings.
The principal composer of the score, a canny blend of ancient and modern, was Lee Yi-chin. Mr. Wu was credited as a vocal composer, along with Lee Men.
Listed deep in the credits was another person deserving special recognition: the company’s international tour manager, June Huang. Ms. Huang has done as much as anyone for the cause of Chinese opera in New York and elsewhere in the country in recent decades, not only in her work with the Contemporary Legend Theater but also, through much of the 1990s, as a programmer at the late, lamented Taipei Theater in New York, where she imported several quality productions each season. Would that we had such regular presentations today.
And that was just the starting point for Wu Hsing-kuo’s remarkable one-man King Lear, which the Lincoln Center Festival presented at the Rose Theater on Thursday evening. This production expanded codified Chinese opera style to include Buddhist chant, contemporary music and electronics, and Western elements — beyond Shakespeare’s play itself, of course. In a spirited turn as the Fool, Mr. Wu inserted a visual joke based on a major scale and, in a fast-paced bit of doggerel, even a mention of New York.
But all this was merely a backdrop for a probing psychological study of wavering identity. As it turns out, this production has deep personal meaning for Mr. Wu, having originated in 2000 — the most difficult time in his life, he writes in a program note.
Mr. Wu, who founded the Contemporary Legend Theater of Taiwan in 1986, shut it down in 1998 after artistic disputes within the company and repeated rejections from theaters. “What Lear expresses was akin to my situation back then,” he writes. “The entire environment made me feel oppressed.”
Happily, he reinstated the Contemporary Legend Theater in 2001. It went on to do a gripping version of Macbeth at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. two years ago, and it presented sterling productions of traditional Chinese fare, The Tipsy Concubine and Farewell My Concubine, at Lincoln Center on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
Unlike the Macbeth, which — exotic as it was — unfolded in more or less linear fashion, King Lear is largely free-form. Act I, the part Mr. Wu produced in 2000, is an extended mad scene in which Lear’s identity progressively disintegrates, literally when Mr. Wu removes the scraggly hair and drooping beard to reveal his own head and face — as himself? As the ghost of Lear? It is never quite clear.
Act II becomes a sea of identities as Mr. Wu virtuosically runs through the drama’s personages (if the dog qualifies as such). They include the Fool, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, Gloucester, Edmund and Edgar. Mr. Wu uses costumes for the early roles, quickly changing onstage, but goes on to show how little he needs them. The climactic encounter between Gloucester and Edgar is a tour de force, with Mr. Wu, relying on little more than mannerisms of body and speech, alternating characters as rapidly as the dialogue shifts.
Mr. Wu injects himself again at the end of the second act, and the fusing of his personality with Lear’s carries through much of the third, until Lear’s ghost (or whoever) is lifted skyward but left hanging in the air.
Like the costumes, the trappings mattered little in the end. The set was minimal, with craggy rock formations and ruined monuments littered about the stage, and the action took place mostly in the dark of night.
Two musicians made shadowy appearances onstage, but for the rest, attention was riveted squarely on Mr. Wu, in whatever guise. So it was startling when, after the curtain had fallen, it lifted again to a stage populated by musicians. But the recognition was deserved, for both here and in the concubine operas earlier, this was a hardy band with a lot of character, including a tangy, sometimes raunchy edge to the lead strings.
The principal composer of the score, a canny blend of ancient and modern, was Lee Yi-chin. Mr. Wu was credited as a vocal composer, along with Lee Men.
Listed deep in the credits was another person deserving special recognition: the company’s international tour manager, June Huang. Ms. Huang has done as much as anyone for the cause of Chinese opera in New York and elsewhere in the country in recent decades, not only in her work with the Contemporary Legend Theater but also, through much of the 1990s, as a programmer at the late, lamented Taipei Theater in New York, where she imported several quality productions each season. Would that we had such regular presentations today.
