Ming Hwa Yuan plays on mythology

With the release of Master of the Sword (劍神呂洞賓) by the Ming Hwa Yuan Taiwanese Opera Company (明華園), the National Theater Taipei sees itself back on the path to a normal production schedule, after SARS. "This is the first really big show we have had at the National Theater," said Liu Chia-yu (劉家瑜), director of public relations at the CKS Cultural Foundation (中正文化中心).

Ming Hwa Yuan is one of Taiwan's most highly regarded opera troupes and one of only a few with the ability to stage a work of such size as the new original production of Master of the Sword.

This work, which went ahead despite SARS fears, will be featuring a cast of over 100 actors and will have a traditional orchestra of 42 instrumentalists -- it is the Broadway of the Taiwanese stage.

Despite the humble origins of Taiwanese opera, Ming Hwa Yuan has taken it to new heights of technical sophistication. The stage set, with its numerous moving parts, will allow Master of the Sword to be performed without any breaks for scene changes.

The story of Master of the Sword, which features the irrepressible immortal Lu Tung-bin (呂洞賓), played by Ming Hwa Yuan's star performer Sun Tsui-feng (孫翠鳳), provides ample opportunity for technical innovation, with its integration of cartoon and fantasy elements into the traditional opera format.

Producer Chen Sheng-fu (陳勝福) said that he was amazed at the ambition of this show, which has taken three years to bring to the stage.

While Taiwanese opera does not have the formal beauty of more ancient forms such as Beijing opera, Ming Hwa Yuan makes up for this deficiency with its beautiful costumes, stage settings and the easy accessibility of the language -- all designed to appeal to a contemporary audience.

In drawing on a character familiar in Chinese, Japanese and Korean mythology and creating new interpretations of old stories, Ming Hwa Yuan continues to add luster to the corpus of Taiwanese opera, bringing the once humble art form to a mainstream theater public.