In the wake of its immensely successful and long-running show Communicating Doors (
A further cross-cultural touch is provided by Jeffery Locker, who has established himself as a local radio and television personality and who is making his first venture onto the stage in Taiwan.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GODOT THEATER COMPANY
The presentation of Black Comedy is part of a double feature of Shaffer's work, with Amadeus (1984), which is scheduled to open at the Dr Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall on Sept. 6.
Schaffer's work was last performed in Taiwan with the powerful adaptation of his 1974 play Equus by the Performance Workshop (
Black Comedy, a humorous romp though the petty deceits of a young sculptor caught in a power outage when trying to impress a rich art collector and his fiance's father, is not a work in the same league as Equus, but is full of energy and easy laughs.
According to director James Liang (
"We decided to relocate all the action to Taipei, and the characters have also been changed in many respects," said Liang.
Thus Colonel Melkett, a crusty old army man who is the hero's prospective father-in-law, is transformed into General Sun, with dialogue and attitudes making the transition with little difficulty. A gay art collector who is the hero's neighbor and whose house is pillaged to provide suitable furnishings for the sculptor's stark flat, takes more of a beating in the translation process, losing some of the subtlety of British verbal high camp for a rather broader humor. Veteran actor Lee Tien-zhu (
Working from a direct translation of the English script, some of the verbal humor is lost, according to Jeffry Locker, who plays the leading role. But there was plenty of room for improvisation, and the mixed accents of the English original were replicated in Chinese with the distinctly mainlander accents of the general, and the use of Cantonese-tinged Mandarin for roles originally intended for German-accented English. Locker's less-than-perfect Chinese provides additional scope for a number of jokes as well.
Foreign residents in Taiwan have not been active in local Chinese-language theater, and this is the first occasion on which a foreigner has played with a local troupe at the National Theater. To Locker's credit, he manages to hold his own, and although reference is made to him as a foreigner, the show rises above the "lets laugh at the wai guo ren" stuff that happens on Super Sunday and other such TV variety programs.
If there is a criticism to make, the choreography of the piece, which is made even more important than in the original by the alterations, is not tight enough. Luckily, there is enough happening on stage to keep the audience occupied. With much of the action taking place in pitch darkness, there is plenty of humorous stage business, and Locker's lanky build is used effectively to exaggerate the effects.
While Black Comedy suffers from certain limitations relating both to the original work and the adaptation, in the terms that it sets itself, namely in pushing the boundaries of Taiwan's modern theater and in presenting strong plays by foreign playwrights to a Taiwan audience, Godot has hit the mark.
Performance Note:
What: Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy by Godot Theater Company
When & Wnere: At the National Theater, 8pm, Aug. 10 - Aug. 13; 2pm, Aug. 11 - Aug. 12; at the Dr Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall 8pm, Sept. 13 - Sept. 15; 2pm, Sept. 15.
Tickets:NT$600 - NT1,400 from performance venue or ERA ticketing outlets Performances will also be held in Kaohsiung, Taichung, Hsinchu and Tainan.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s