Print

Mail

wiki links

Godot's latest stands the test of time and translation

Performance notes What Communicating Doors (開錯門中門) When and Where Opens today and runs until Sunday in Taipei; Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Oct. 21, 22 at Hsinchu County Cultural Center Nov. 2, 3 at Kaohsiung Chih-te Hall Nov. 9, 10 at Taichung Chunghsing Hall Tickets NT$350 to NT$1,500

The Godot theater troupe has always made a point of making the wide world of theater available to Taiwan's audiences. They have proved willing to experiment, updating traditional Chinese works or adapting foreign plays for local tastes. But with the Alan Ayckbourn comedy "Communicating Doors," director James Liang (梁志明) said very little had to be done.

"Much of the humor develops from the situation and the characters," he said. "There was very little problem with the language."

Set in an elegant suite of the Regal Hotel, the play begins in the year 2020. BoBo the prostitute accidentally discovers that the communicating door to the adjoining room is actually a portal to the past. After walking through it and finding herself in 1980, she joins forces with another character to prevent a couple of murders, including her own.

Ayckbourn, author of such comic hits has "The Norman Conquests" and "Bedroom Farce," plays up the bedroom theme in this play written in 1996. And while the mildly salacious is given plenty of play, the story has much more to say.

"You laugh your way through it, but at the end it leaves you with something to think about,?said Fang Hsing (方馨), who plays the prostitute BoBo, who gets drawn into the personal problems of the protagonists after walking through the time tunnel that connects three separate time periods. This forms the infrastructure of the play.

Time travel and the dramatic potential it offers has been used a great deal both in theater and in cinema, most notably in Back to the Future and the current blockbuster Frequency. This is the third time that Godot has presented Communicating Doors it was performed in 1996 and 1997 - and this revival with a new cast is expected to do well.

According to Chen You-fang (陳幼芳), the star of many highly successful commercials and the female lead in this performance, by "doing the play we are just having fun. Some of us have worked closely together for so long now, we have an excellent rapport."

Although there are plenty of laughs, Liang said that ultimately "this is a play about the ramifications of a person's actions both on himself and on other people." Among other things, the ability to integrate intellectual content with farce and the absurd is behind making Ayckbourn one of England's foremost British playwrights.

The plays proven track record in Taiwan indicates that little is lost in the translation to Chinese.
This story has been viewed 1858 times.