[ Editor’s note: Following Thursday night’s confirmation that an Australian composer and violist who performed with the National Symphony Orchestra in the National Concert Hall on Feb. 28 tested positive for COVID-19 upon his return to Australia, the National Theater Concert Hall today announced that this weekend's shows have been cancelled to allow for the full disinfection of both venues over the weekend. The “I Rhyme for You-Love Song Revival" production has been postponed to a later date.]
Love won and lost, longing and connections and memories are the common elements of two disparate musical productions taking place this weekend as part of the Taiwan International Festival of Arts in Taipei and Taichung.
Opening tonight at the National Theater in Taipei is the Yang Ensemble’s (楊景翔演劇團) production of Love Song — Rhyme for you Revival (我為你押韻—情歌Revival), commissioned for this year’s festival by the National Theater Concert Hall.
Photo courtesy of Priska Ketterer — Lucerne Festival
Love Song — Rhyme for you was first performed by the Creative Society Theatre Company (創作社劇團) at the Wenshan Theater in May 2011 and became an immediate hit. It has toured extensively in Taiwan in the intervening years as well as traveling to Beijing and Shanghai.
Written by award-winning playwright Birdy Fong (馮勃棣) and directed by Yang Ching-hsiang (楊景翔), the show, a melodrama centering on a mysterious woman and a suicidal playwright suffering from creative block, features almost 100 love songs, mostly from the 1990s, as it seeks to portray the love affairs of ordinary people.
Photo courtesy of Chou Chia-hu
Think karaoke meets Romeo and Juliet, Taiwanese style, or the kind of daydreaming when all the confusion and upsets in your romantic life can be explained and resolved through song.
The nine-member cast of the revival features Sun Ke-fong (孫可芳) as the female lead and original cast members Wang Hong-yuan (王宏元) and Ling Chia-chi (林家麒) as the two male leads.
Live music is provided by folk rocker Birdman C (日京江羽人).
Photo courtesy of Chou Chia-hu
The show runs about two hours and the top-tier seats, priced at NT$3,200, are for the first two rows in the orchestra section, where the audience not only gets a close up view of the action, they become part of the show themselves.
After four shows this weekend in Taipei, the production moves to the National Taichung Theater for two shows next weekend in the Playhouse.
BLANK OUT
Photo courtesy of Priska Ketterer — Lucerne Festival
Dutch contemporary composer Michel van der Aa’s music theater production Blank Out was inspired by the work and life of South African poet Ingrid Jonker (1933 to 1965), whose criticism of her nation’s apartheid policies and censorship in the 1950s and early 1960s brought her into conflict not just with the government of the day, but her own father, a prominent lawmaker who headed the parliamentary committee responsible for the censorship laws and who eventually disowned her.
Jonker committed suicide at the age of 31 by walking into the sea off Cape Town, leading her to be sometimes compared with American poet Sylvia Plath. Her poetry and short stories, written in Afrikaans, have been widely translated, and after her death, friends created the Ingrid Jonker Prize for the best debut work of Afrikaans or English poetry.
Blank Out, a coproduction of the Dutch National Opera, the Lucerne Festival and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, premiered on March 20, 2016, in Amsterdam as part of the Opera Forward festival.
The show, set in a house by the sea, explores the tangled connections between a parent and child and the unreliability of memories, presented through the dialogue between a man and his mother about a family tragedy.
The text is a combination of writings by van der Aa and Jonker’s poems.
While the digital technology in the form of interactive 3D film and electronic music is central to the work, blurring the lines between reality and imagination, life and death, the show also emphasizes the human touch.
The 49-year-old Van der Aa studied recording engineering at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and film direction at the New York Film Academy, and has become known for works incorporating film and sampled soundtracks.
Two British singers are featured in the production, soprano Katherine Manley, the sole performer on stage, and baritone Roderick Williams, who appears in the film as the son. Choral portions on the film were sung by the Nederlands Kamerkoor.
Audience members will be provided with 3D glasses to wear during the performances.
Blank Out is 70 minutes long, without an intermission, and is performed in English, with Mandarin and English surtitles.
COVID-19 CANCELATIONS
The NTCH on Wednesday announced two more cancelations as a result of the spread of COVID-19 around the globe: the March 20 concert by French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the Ensemble Artaserse and Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi’s Seven Days Walking production on April 18.
Both Jaroussky and Einaudi have canceled their entire Asian tours. The former was to perform in Kaohsiung (at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts on March 18), Shanghai and Tokyo, while Einaudi was also to perform in Tokyo, Osaka and Seoul.
In the NTCH’s news release about the cancelations, Einaudi said he had been looking forward to visiting Taiwan for the first time and was sorry to have to cancel.
The NTCH said customers who have purchased tickets for Jaroussky’s show can apply for a full refund through April 2, while those with tickets for Einaudi’s concert have until to April 30.
Tickets bought with credit cards would be processed automatically, while those who paid cash can get refunds from the ArtsTicket System’s service centers in Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung or by mailing your ticket(s) and a copy of your passbook to Ms. Chang, National Theatre, E-Commerce Section, 21-1 Chungshan S. Rd, Taipei, 10048 before the closing dates. For more information, call 2-3393-9888.
Performance Notes
What: Love Song — Rhyme for you Revival
When: Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm, tomorrow and Sunday at 2:30pm
Where: National Theater (國家戲劇院), 21-1 Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號)
Admission: NT$800 to NT$3,200, available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at convenience store ticketing kiosks
Additional performances: Saturday next week at 2:30pm and 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm at The Playhouse (中劇院) at the National Taichung Theater (台中國家歌劇院), 101, Huilai Rd Sec 2, Taichung City (台中市惠來路二段101號). Tickets are NT$700 to NT$2,200, available at NTT box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at convenience store ticketing kiosks
What: Blank Out
When: Tomorrow and Saturday at 7:30pm
Where: The Playhouse (中劇院) at the National Taichung Theater (台中國家歌劇院), 101, Huilai Rd Sec 2, Taichung City (台中市惠來路二段101號)
Admission: NT$600 to NT$2,000, available at NTT box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw and at convenience store ticketing kiosks
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