American director Robert Wilson said his new production with Taiwan’s U-Theatre (優劇場), 1433 — The Grand Voyage (鄭和1433), would be a journey of exploration. Saturday night at the National Theater, he certainly delivered on that promise.
What a wonderful journey 1433 was, beginning with giant white-clad Eskimos moving slowly across a white expanse, before taking off for Africa, China, Vietnam and Malacca.
U-Theatre director Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀) crafted a script that told the story of Ming dynasty explorer Zheng He (鄭和) — played silently by her husband Huang Chih-chun (黃誌群) — through flashbacks. While Zheng explored the world for his emperor, his story is also one of loss and longing, for like so many imperial officials, he had been made a eunuch as a child.
The stars of the show were Taiwanese gezai (歌仔) diva Tang Mei-yun (唐美雲), saxophonist Richard “Dickie” Landry and costume designer Tim Yip (葉錦添).
Tang had the audience in the palm of her hand. First seen as a crippled old man with a beard down to his knees, the white-face Tang metamorphosed into dapper MC in black pants, suspenders and a white shirt, a motorcycle mama in a black leather vest, cap and chains, a bluesy crooner in shades and a fedora and a mustachioed comic (with a mustache that was a mix of Charlie Chaplin and Chinese Nationalist Party Secretary-General King Pu-tsung [金溥聰]). She hobbled, strutted, swaggered, did a Cajun two-step, sang, talked, and riffed with Landry like she was Ella Fitzgerald.
The most amazing thing about Tang’s duets with Landry was that he — like any good jazz musician — is improvising all the time and she plays along. Every show, they are making their own journeys.
Then there were the costumes. This show needs to go to London or New York just so Yip can win an Oliver or a Tony. His designs were brilliant, turning elements of traditional Chinese court dress into something extraordinary. General Ma Huan (馬歡) — played by Huang Kun-ming (黃焜明) — wears a three-tiered hat that looks like a miniature pagoda, while aide Fei Shin (費信) — played by Huang Kuo-chung (黃國忠) — had the most amazing triple-hoop skirt that often appeared to have a life of its own as he shimmied across the stage. Linking many of the costumes were the broad shoulder pads spiking off to each side that appeared, however, to have more in common with Ziggy Stardust or Kiss than Asian history. The African dancers’ costumes were a wonderful, whimsical mix of wooden facemasks and multi-layered stringed garments. Then there was Queen Lipo (麗波皇后), played by Liu, who looked like a 1950s glamour queen.
The cast and musicians came from U-Theatre and it was terrific to see some familiar faces doing very unfamiliar things, even though the usually graceful, fluid Huang Chih-chun was largely restricted to sharp, jerky moves.
The lighting, by American AJ Weissbard, washed the stage with strong reds or blues — or sometimes just Zheng He’s face or hands — or stripped it until it resembled a black-and-white snapshot.
Wilson has been both praised and criticized for creating “a series of stage pictures” in his works, but for 1433 these pictures are worth a thousand words: the sea of clouds, the black-and-white court scenes, a wonderful giraffe, a sailing junk of rectangular bamboo crates and a billowing square of white silk.
Running at almost three hours, 1422 tests both the performers’ and the armchair travelers in the audience’s physical endurance, but it is a trip of a lifetime. The company will perform 1433 from Wednesday night through Sunday afternoon as part of the 2010 Taiwan International Festival.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist