It might be the most highly anticipated play in Beijing this
year. Brothers, adapted from Yu Hua's acclaimed novel of the same
title, produced by Shanghai Artistic Drama Center, will tour
Beijing from September 30 to October 4 at Poly Theater.
Xu Zheng plays Bald
Li.
The main reason behind the high expectation is that
Yu's novel is a sensation itself. The novel was a hit when it was
released in August 2005 and soon became the talk of the town in
many cities, a scene quite rare for fiction in China. It topped the
country's literature best-seller charts immediately after hitting
the market.
A good play must have an interesting story. Yu has a gift for
telling stories, but how to tell it in a theater is another
thing.
What's more, Yu has not shied away from violence in his
narration. He does not become maudlin and somehow retains humor
demonstrating a cold-bloodedness, especially showed in his
descriptions of the scenes of cruelty during the "cultural
revolution" (1966-76). For one moment the readers will even wonder
whether these scenes could really have happened because they are so
absurd.
Therefore, people all felt curious about how it would be
performed on stage. The playwright Li Rong and director Xiong
Yuanwei's solution is to avoid the "cultural revolution" part of
the first half of the novel and focus on the second half which
depicts the protagonists' life in the 1980s and 1990s, because "the
second half of the novel concerns today's social condition more,"
Li says.
Though it might disappoint some of Yu's followers because the
first half is considered better in terms of narration and language,
the play's premiere in Shanghai in May and June turned out to be a
great success. The sold-out 15 shows resulted in a box-office
revenue that has ranked second only to a comic adapted from a
popular TV soap opera.
The novel tells the personal history of the two protagonists Li
Guangtou (Bald Li) and Song Gang, a pair of stepbrothers, in
chronicle order. The first half deals with the tribulations of the
two brothers' childhood and adolescence in the midst of the
"cultural revolution", while the second half, set in the present
day, follows the fates of the two brothers separately. Bald Li
shows a talent for business, becoming head of a small factory where
all the workers are disabled. His stepbrother Song, however, wins
love. He marries Lin Hong, the woman Bald Li falls in love with
too.
Director Xiong focuses on the special bond between the
stepbrothers, but changes some details to make it fit the theater.
For example, the novel begins in the restless early youth of Bald
Li who gets caught while peeping at women in a public toilet. In
the play, he peeps at women showering. The "virgin competition" is
changed into a beauty pageant. To focus on the leading roles of the
brothers and Lin Hong, some supporting characters in the novel were
left out.
"I have tried to maintain Yu's original cold humor and
absurdity. Though the audience burst into laughter from time to
time, the full-length play is is a tear-jerking production,
melodramatic and sentimental," says the director.
The success of the play is also credited to Xu Zheng who acts
Bald Li.
The actor, who does not conceal his dislike of the novel, gives a
vivid performance.
"I don't like the narration of the novel. I even could not
finish reading the first 10 pages because the only thing the 10
pages tell is how Bald Li peeps at women in a public toilet," says
Xu, who gradated from the Shanghai Academy of Drama in 1994 and has
been active in theater and TV.
"I have nothing in common with Bold Li or any similar
personalities. So I did not think I fit the role. Usually I prefer
to play a character that resembles me or that I appreciate. But
director Xiong believes I could be a perfect Bald Li and persuaded
me to do it."
Interestingly, the writer Yu has avoided any contact with the
play until recently he signed 200 books which will be given as
gifts to those who buy the VIP tickets to the Beijing run. He did
not help adapt the story, nor go to rehearsals, hasn't watched the
play so far and refuses to comment on it.
When asked whether he will go to see the play when it runs in
Beijing, the author answered "no" and asked: "Why should I go to
watch it?"
"He is such a wise writer that he says nothing, allowing us to
adapt the play freely and making himself an open-minded onlooker,"
says the playwright Li.
(China Daily September 26, 2007)
