Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✩✩✩✩
written and directed by Dennis K. Law
Sight, Sound & Action, Canon Theatre, Toronto
March 11-28, 2010
If you go to Monkey King because it claims to be “The First Chinese Rock-Musical,” you will be bitterly disappointed. Zhou Jiaojiao’s music may include the occasional electric guitar, but mostly it sounds like a mélange of sci-fi soundtracks from the original Godzilla to Revenge of the Sith. “Rock” music makes no appearance until the extended curtain call when the mythological characters we have been watching suddenly return wearing top hats, huge Afro wigs and Day-Glo coloured dreadlocks to romp to a soundtrack reminiscent of disco-era Kiss. This coda has nothing to do with what preceded it.
Monkey King, also known as Journey to the West, was published in the 16th century and counts as one of China’s “Four Great Classical Novels.” It is an enormous mythological epic of 100 chapters which Dennis K. Law, the writer, director, producer and art director, has reduced to 20 scenes of dance, mime, martial arts and the odd pop ballad. What we have is basically the Lord of the Rings The Musical problem all over again except without that work’s imagination. It is all empty, uninvolving spectacle. There are over 70 performers and over 500 costumes that range from the effective (those for the Wild Bull King or the Princess of Icy Mountains) to the ludicrously over-the top (the entire gold lamé court of the gods) to the worst pantomime horse you’ve ever seen.
The choreography combines acrobatics, martial arts and Western-style ballet, but only one dance of Chinese origin. This mixture could be exciting, but after 20 minutes the four choreographers run out of ideas and simply repeat themselves for the next two hours. Worse, the choreography, performed without precision, is narratively unclear. Without the scene summaries in English and Chinese on LED screens on either side of the stage, you’d never guess what was supposed to be occurring on stage. You gather that Monkey King is on a quest to to save the gods from the evil Wild Bull King and his consort the Iron Fan Princess. You also gather that the Princess of Icy Mountains and her friend Skunky (a skunk) hopelessly love the monk Tang Seng and his friend Porky (a pig), but any strict sense of cause and effect is lost in a welter of meaningless, seemingly identical battles. Monkey King claims to be a family show, but Dennis K. Law twice shows a child being gruesomely slaughtered on stage by the Wild Bull King’s demons. It claims to be a musical, but except for two live drummers the score is pre-recorded and ear-splittingly amplified. If you’re in the mood for a Chinese adventure story, better to rent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again than see a classic tale made so mind-numbingly vapid.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-03-11.
Photo: The Princess of Icy Mountains. ©Dennis K. Law.
2010-03-10
Monkey King