Beijing's 6th Theater Olympics shifts into high gear

Tadashi Suzuki's Tale of Lear amazes the audience with its beauty of physicality, both interior and exterior.[Photo Provided to China Daily]

About half of the festival lineup is imported productions and Shakespeare jumps out as a main attraction. Three Hamlet productions, from Lithuania, Georgia and the United Kingdom, a King Lear from Japan, a Macbeth and an As You Like It from Georgia, plus A Midnight Summer's Dream from the Bard's own Globe Theatre, combine to form a mini-festival of its own. But then, if there is one language shared by theater professionals the world over, it must be Shakespeare's immortal lines and tales.

However, it is not the stories per se, but rather, the presentation of them - albeit in different languages - that fascinates Chinese theatergoers. The spoken play, when performed to a foreign audience who do not understand the language, cannot rely on the power of the word alone. It needs help from stage designs and directorial flourishes, which are in abundance at this festival.

The Hamlet from Lithuania's OKT Theatre places the tragedy in a David Lynch-like world, with nine dressing tables and mirrors that accentuate the pale faces of the actors. "It is a gothic hell stinking with death and decay," writes Tian Huiqun, a professor of Beijing Normal University. "The audience were thrown into the thick of the plot by the mirrors and, figuratively, in that hell."

Tadashi Suzuki's Tale of Lear incorporates actors from Japan, China and South Korea and has them speak their own languages, but all in a Kabuki or Noh style. The two elder daughters emerge as powerful players in this almost operatic version of betrayal, but Cordelia, the youngest daughter, and the thunderstorm scene, a centerpiece in most productions, seem to diminish in impact.

The familiar stories with unfamiliar treatments have shocked quite a few spectators. A student who watched Suzuki's version of Cyrano de Bergerac asked the Japanese master whether what he did to the classic amounted to "blasphemy". The female lead does not have the kind of qualities - in appearance or voice - that many associate with romance, and the two male leads deliver their lines with a harshness that shook many in the audience from what was otherwise an ambience of love. On top of that, Suzuki requested that only a few lines be translated into Chinese titles, an approach he intended to divert audience attention back to visual elements.