Melbourne Festival: The Blue Dragon
Cameron Woodhead's review of The Blue Dragon is on-line at The Age web site, here, and I find I pretty much agree with the major points he makes.
But what intrigues me is how a four star rating can be awarded a show in which "the narrative remains superficial", the plot "resembles [that of] a middlebrow midlife crisis novel", the characters "leave faint impressions" and where the show, like the protagonist Pierre, is "infected by orientalism" and might leave us "undernourished"... even the Chinese dance is "problematic".
I quite agree!
Henri Chassé contemplates... bathwater sans baby
Oh, and "the performers develop a static, exaggerated style that rarely moves beyond caricature." Touché again.
Cameron, oh Cameron... has your review been nobbled? I know (via Twitter) Michelle Griffin loved The Blue Dragon, and that Michael Shmith (IRL) adored it too... But, gasp, would they? Could they?
Me? I gave it a solid two outa five. My date slept quietly.
Robert Lepage and his Ex Machina company have been regulars on the festival circuit since the 1990s. For good reason. He is a brilliant story teller and actor, and an ingenious director of theatre, opera and more recently film. We’ve seen his one-person shows and his hardcore operas (Bartok and Schoenberg) as well as his marathon soap operas. His last work in Australia, Lipsynch, had five intervals and ran from early afternoon deep into the night. Like many of his works, it spanned generations and continents. It was gripping and deeply moving.
In comparison, The Blue Dragon (created the year after Lipsynch) is a mediocre work, a banal tale badly told. It’s Madame Butterfly set in a booming modern China instead of war-torn Japan. The contemporary twist is certainly topical -- the intersection of China’s one-child-per-couple policy and the West’s recent obsession with the adoption of children from non-Western countries -- but the treatment is superficial and the acting is soulless and half-hearted.
Five-star orientalism: Tai Wei Foo in The Blue Dragon
The star of this show, really, is Michel Gauthier’s set which morphs from the inside of a plane to a Shanghai loft to a railway station in the blink of an eye. What a shame the projected translations (the play is performed in French, Mandarin and English) on opening night weren’t anywhere near as well honed.
A slightly shortened version of this review appears in The Herald Sun today.
The Blue Dragon. Written by Robert Lepage and Marie Michaud. Produced by Ex Machina. Directed by Robert Lepage. Set design by Michel Gauthier. Sound design by Jean-Sébastien Côté. Lighting design by Louis-Xavier Gagnon-Lebrun. Costume design by François St-Aubin. Projection design by David Leclerc. Choreographed by Tai Wei Foo. Performed by Henri Chassé, Marie Michaud and Tai Wei Foo.
But what intrigues me is how a four star rating can be awarded a show in which "the narrative remains superficial", the plot "resembles [that of] a middlebrow midlife crisis novel", the characters "leave faint impressions" and where the show, like the protagonist Pierre, is "infected by orientalism" and might leave us "undernourished"... even the Chinese dance is "problematic".
I quite agree!
Henri Chassé contemplates... bathwater sans baby
Oh, and "the performers develop a static, exaggerated style that rarely moves beyond caricature." Touché again.
Cameron, oh Cameron... has your review been nobbled? I know (via Twitter) Michelle Griffin loved The Blue Dragon, and that Michael Shmith (IRL) adored it too... But, gasp, would they? Could they?
Me? I gave it a solid two outa five. My date slept quietly.
Robert Lepage and his Ex Machina company have been regulars on the festival circuit since the 1990s. For good reason. He is a brilliant story teller and actor, and an ingenious director of theatre, opera and more recently film. We’ve seen his one-person shows and his hardcore operas (Bartok and Schoenberg) as well as his marathon soap operas. His last work in Australia, Lipsynch, had five intervals and ran from early afternoon deep into the night. Like many of his works, it spanned generations and continents. It was gripping and deeply moving.
In comparison, The Blue Dragon (created the year after Lipsynch) is a mediocre work, a banal tale badly told. It’s Madame Butterfly set in a booming modern China instead of war-torn Japan. The contemporary twist is certainly topical -- the intersection of China’s one-child-per-couple policy and the West’s recent obsession with the adoption of children from non-Western countries -- but the treatment is superficial and the acting is soulless and half-hearted.
Five-star orientalism: Tai Wei Foo in The Blue Dragon
The star of this show, really, is Michel Gauthier’s set which morphs from the inside of a plane to a Shanghai loft to a railway station in the blink of an eye. What a shame the projected translations (the play is performed in French, Mandarin and English) on opening night weren’t anywhere near as well honed.
A slightly shortened version of this review appears in The Herald Sun today.
The Blue Dragon. Written by Robert Lepage and Marie Michaud. Produced by Ex Machina. Directed by Robert Lepage. Set design by Michel Gauthier. Sound design by Jean-Sébastien Côté. Lighting design by Louis-Xavier Gagnon-Lebrun. Costume design by François St-Aubin. Projection design by David Leclerc. Choreographed by Tai Wei Foo. Performed by Henri Chassé, Marie Michaud and Tai Wei Foo.
Labels: Ex Machina, Melbourne Festival, Michel Gauthier, Robert Lepage
posted by Chris Boyd at 4:20 PM
9 Comments:
Funny, I was in total accord with Cameron there. But also puzzled on the four stars.
I don't do stars. And thank god for that.
a rare alignment of stars... or should that read another rare alignment?
I did notice that when writing about the Comedy Festival in The Age earlier this year that a half star in print got rounded up to a full star on the website - so is it possible that the review started out as three and a half stars?
We all seem to be in agreement on this work, though - I was also deeply underwhelmed by The Blue Dragon. Stagecraft alone cannot hold my attention, no matter how stunning its design and execution.
We agree more than we're inclined to think, or than public entertainment demands.
And no I wasn't nobbled. Sif I would be. Stars make me anxious, so I usually get them out of the way before I write. Sometimes, as here, it's only in the process of writing that I realise how ripped off I felt about a piece of theatre, and in the rush of filing forget to change the stars before the deadline bears down upon me.
Sif indeed!
Yeah, orright. I can totally relate to performance anxiety. :-)
I'm also intrigued by the times when we heartily agree on a conclusion (e.g. Life Without Me = VG) and disagree on (almost) everything else... you thought the MTC production was a liability, I thought it was one of their best -- of a new Australian play at least -- in yonks.
And, hey, been meaning to tell you, I coined the word 'hobo-erotic' in response to your review of Godot. (Which I thought was utter shite, and quite the worst Godot I've ever seen... even worse than one I was in! LOL)
"Hobo-erotic" is win (even if we disagree about the Godot). Mind if I use it in the Dictionary of 21st century words I'm compiling on mah blog? Berenice is chafing at the bit.
Re: Life Without Me. Much as I'm inclined to agree to disagree about why we agree, your reasoning made me want to blow chunks. I'll take your dangerous lunacy to task when I have the leisure ...
BIFF. BAM. KAPOW.
>.<
Better to blow chunks than, er, dry blow I s'pose. You may use hoboerotic and hobosexual if you attribute them. (No need for a forelock-tugging backhander like il miglior fabbro or nothin'.)
As for Life Without Me -- you spoiled it all by reading the play before seein' it. You and your Platonic forms... And the MTC go and s(p)oil it all by acting it out and failing to live up to your heady dreams. :-)
Speaking of which -- dreams that is -- get some sleep will ya? Those bags around your eyes are starting to look like prosc. arches.
"Those bags around your eyes are starting to look like prosc. arches."
Chris, you don't want to go there, trust me. You'd lose the beauty contest, and metaphor is one of my strong points.
It's weird, though. I've been sleeping a solid 7-8 hours a night for the last few weeks. The bags are probably a combo of genetic inheritance (deep-set eyes run in my family), an idiopathically raised metabolism and too many cancer sticks.
Who knows? Who gives a rat's?
Reading a script before seeing a show is more interesting ground, which I'll cover elsewhere.
Belatedly recognised >.< as an emoticon. Eric Cartman praps? Without the chubby cheeks... So maybe just lil ol stressed you.
The great advantage of lookin' like me (and being a good decade [and one of those chunks you blow] older than you) is that me at my very very worst is hardly distinguishable from me at my very very best.
So, yeah, I quite agree... it's a "no contest" in the swimsuit section.
My apologies for the comment moderation. I have blogger set to free-for-all for the first days after a posting, then it stops everything. Seems to be best way to avoid comment spam.
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