Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh proves to be the most ambitious and challenging play that LAB Space has undertaken this year.
Director Brook Hall admits to seeking the challenge, showing how LAB Space’s black box theater can do a play involving multiple scene and costume changes as well as including the intriguing exoticism of India.
A different challenge comes from McNally himself who pairs two stereotypical middle-aged Connecticut women. They are friends, but each has her secrets. Together they have foregone another “boring” vacation in the Caribbean to take on a personal and spiritual “passage to India.”
Photo courtesy of Fabian Hamacher
McNally frames the play as a situation comedy, but he also has other thematic goals in mind such as gay acceptance, AIDS, personal loss and redemption.
The play’s successful denouement depends on a better understanding of the origin and role of omni-present Ganesh, the god of wisdom in the Hindu pantheon.
Stephen Rong, who plays the character Man, comes through in a role that requires much diversity as he plays many separate supporting parts.
The two women face separate secret demons as they bond. Margaret (Sue Desimone) must overcome a buried past, hidden behind a brassy front. (“I’ve had my day.”) Katherine (Sharon Landon) grieves at not being able to tell her “imperfect gay” son that she loved him before he passed away. (“All I have left is my anger.”) The women work well including a number of humorous moments as they attempt to handle the diversity of India.
The script, however, is lengthy and creates too much of an ambivalent challenge by further playing this against each woman’s separate redemptive pathos. EM Forster found it best not to mix sit-com with seriousness. This might be why McNally didn’t receive the Pulitzer for the work, though it nominated.
The Taiwan-born Manav Mehta, completes the cast. He wears the challenging Ganesh mask and conveys the compassionate acceptance of life’s diversity.
All in all, Hall continues to build a solid group of actors in Taiwan. The opening night had a few kinks with sound and props, but that did not alter the solid performances.
Jen-Jacques Chen, whose brief puppet animation cleverly explained Ganesh’s origin, deserves mention.
A Perfect Ganesh, partially sponsored by Taipei’s Department of Cultural Affairs, is worth seeing and LAB space is worth supporting.
The play continues tomorrow through Sunday with all shows beginning at 8pm. Tickets are NT$600 and can be bought through www.accupass.com/go/ganesh
For more information on the theater troupe and directions to get there, go to: www.thelabtw.com.
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby