Outstanding kun opera productions are far from unusual these days, but there was a good turnout, if somewhat short of a full house, for the opening night of Lanting Kun Opera Troupe’s (蘭庭崑劇團) Six Legends of Lan Ting (蘭庭六記) on Friday at Novel Hall for Performing Arts (新舞臺).
Six Legends was a showcase of the sheng (生), or young male lead role, featuring US-based kun star Wen Yuhang (溫宇航), formerly a leading performer with The Northern Kunqu Opera Theater (北方崑曲劇院) in China.
Ably supporting him was a lineup drawn largely from Taiwan’s National Guoguang Opera Company (國立國光劇團). The production’s director, Zhang Shizheng (張世錚), a leading performer with the Zhejiang Kun Opera Company (浙江崑劇團), put in an especially adept performance in an excerpt from The Tale of the Embroidered Jacket (繡襦記), the second of three opera excerpts that made up the opening night’s program.
Zhang, who played the role of a father who is torn between joy at discovering his long-lost son and anger that this son was now a pauper frequenting the town’s red light district, was a model of the nuances that can be injected into even the heavily stylized forms of Chinese opera.
One highlight was the Tale of the White Rabbit (白兔記), two scenes from which made up the second half of the program. This opera from the Yuan Dynasty is rarely staged, and the moral attitudes it embraces can seem alien and even unpalatable to a modern audience. Nevertheless, Chen Ching-he (陳清河) was delightfully humorous as the evil mother-in-law.
Unfortunately technical problems bedeviled the latter half of White Rabbit, with mic hiss and pops all but drowning out the performers, who soldiered bravely through nevertheless.
One of the best aspects of the show was the costumes, which had a very elegant cut, made bold use of color and included a number of clever design flourishes. Given that the Lanting Kun Opera Troupe had opted to be very traditional with the sets — nothing more than a chair and table and a red rug covering the stage — all attention could focus on the characters themselves.
The fact that elaborate props were dispensed with and the only multimedia element was the projection of scans from the original opera libretti onto the background (a device used to highlight the literary roots of kun opera), was very gratifying, as it put attention back where it belongs.
At the Experimental Theater on Saturday afternoon, the first half of the New Productions of Emerging Taiwanese Choreographers program provided a new look for some favorite choreographers and tantalizing taste of a relative newcomer.
The show opened with Lien Ho’s (賀連華) solo Coming Home, an interesting juxtaposition of Aboriginal and Spanish cultures. Lien used her flamenco training to express her longing for a lost world as Aboriginal singers Panai and Nabu stood stage center to sing Panai’s Perhaps One Day. While the music was powerful and Lien’s performance was heartfelt, the piece was the weakest on the program.
Chen Wu-kang (陳武康) and girlfriend Yeh Ming-hwa’s (葉名樺) Dimmer was a more light-hearted romp, as Wang and his three Kewpie doll-looking colleagues scuttled around to four songs by Leon Redbone, often in a full plie position, which made my knees hurt just to watch.
Having never seen the work of Sun Chuo-tai (孫梲泰), his Sho-jing left me eager to see what he has in store with his 8213 Physical Dance Theater performances next month. Shirtless, clad in wide-bodied tie-dyed skirt and white body power, Shu was mesmerizing — and sometimes spooky — as he moved within a video-projected circle while scenes of temple roofs, kaleidoscope images and a bulldozer at work were projected on the back wall, all part of his modern take on the ancient ritual of purifying the souls of scared children.
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