'Ciao Ci-chao' arrives in Taipei

After holding performances in Taitung, Tainan and Hsinchu since May 27, the widely talked-about play Ciao Ci-chao (曹七巧) has finally arrived in Taipei this week.

Presented by the Taitung Theater (台東劇團), the three-hour-long stage show will start at 7pm tonight at Play Red House (紅樓劇場) in Ximending (西門町), Taipei. To celebrate its last three island tours, live music will be added for this staging.

Ciao Ci-chao is adapted from the novel Record of a Golden Lock (金鎖記), a masterpiece of the late Eileen Chang (張愛玲). The production of this play coincides with the 10-year commemoration of Chang for her life-long achievement in Chinese literature.

Digging deep

As stage director and script writer Liu Liang-yen (劉亮延), a young poet in his 20s, said, "The novel Record of a Golden Lock was published in 1943 and it is one of the best works by Chang to go really deep and depict a female character widowed in the early 20th century."

In those years, female liberation and modernist thought sprouted up after the May Fourth Movement.

Ciao, the main character in the play, has been living the life of a widow after her husband died young. She tries to fight against the hopeless bondage of widowhood by flirting first with her brother-in-law and later with some other men, but all to no avail.

So complaints become the center of her everyday life and they evolve into the major developmental theme throughout the play.

Liu said this is a play about a middle-aged widow who tends to mistreat people around her and hates to face the reality of getting old, by simply hiding herself in nostalgia. In his remarks at a press conference, Liu said that the play is a "homage to the bitch in the 20th century, an

invitation for each melancholic in the 21st century and a cheer for nymphomaniacs."

Mix and match

Unique in its style of performance, the play simultaneously applies the core techniques of Peking Opera and modern dance. Qian Yu-shan (錢宇珊), who plays the leading role of Ciao, has been a professional dance performer for many years and is a graduate of the National Fu-Hsing Dramatic ARTS Academy (復興劇校). He has a solid training in both Peking Opera and modern dance.

Qian once said to Liu, "My anger, jealousy, contempt and flirting in this life has all been offered up in this play. After the performance of this play, I'll change to become a simple and happy person."

In addition to Ciao, Liu has created two indispensable characters. A pleasant-looking young female servant is played by Jasmine Wang (王世緯), who is now in charge of training courses in the drama club, and an old house-keeper is performed by Sunny Yang (楊乃璇), who is an experienced dancer from the National Taiwan University of Arts (台灣藝術大學).

Another notable feature of the production is its stage and costume designs. The main stage scene is all hand-made and is decorated with Shanghai-style hanging papers and paper dolls. Even more eye-catching are the costumes with red flowers, which provide a powerful contrast to the melancholy-filled stage background.

Performance notes:

Who: Taitung Theater (台東劇團)

What: Ciao Ci-Chao (曹七巧)

Where: Play Red House (紅樓) in Ximending, Taipei

When: Friday 7pm; Saturday 7pm; Sunday 2pm.

Tickets: NT$600.

Telephone: (02) 3393 9888