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written by Marie Michaud & Robert Lepage, directed by Robert Lepage

Ex Machina & David Mirvish, Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto

January 11-February 19, 2012

The Blue Dragon (Le Dragon bleu), a theatre piece by Marie Michaud and Robert Lepage from 2009, is finally having its Toronto premiere courtesy of David Mirvish.  As a production it is, as one can come to expect from Lepage, mind-bogglingly inventive and often exquisitely beautiful.  As a work of drama, however, it has virtually nothing to say and, infuriatingly enough, turns its indecision about how to end into a conscious artistic choice.  This non-ending only reinforces the notion that some of Lepage’s recent work, like The Anderson Project of 2006, has been more interested in its mise en scène as an end in itself rather than as a means of telling a story.

The Blue Dragon is a sequel to Lepage’s acclaimed Dragon Trilogy that first appeared in 1985.  At the end of that work, the Québécois painter Pierre Lamontagne leaves Canada to work in China.  In the sequel set in 2007, we find Pierre (Henri Chassé) living in Shanghai in a former industrial complex converted into an arts centre.  He is no longer painting but instead runs a gallery to further the talent of new Chinese artists.  One of these is Xiao Ling (Tai Wei Foo), who is in a relationship of uncertain exclusivity with Pierre.  What precipitates the action is the arrival in Claire Forêt (Marie Michaud), a Montreal advertising executive, who had known Pierre when they were in art school together.  She has come to adopt a 22-month-old girl seemingly as a way to give her life some purpose.  She still has feelings for Pierre and thinks he has squandered his talent.  Her presence and Xiao Ling’s pregnancy by an unknown father complicate relations among the three.

What is frustrating about the story, unlike those in other Lepage works, is that so many aspects of the imagery are not followed up.  The blue dragon of the title refers to a tattoo that Pierre has on his back that was drawn there by Xiao Ling when she was a tattoo artist in Hong Kong.  In visually amazing scene we see Pierre’s body become invisible against a backdrop of his flesh colour as the projection of a giant tattooing needle completes a giant dragon tattoo of which his body is only a small part.  The body as art is a subject that would seem to be a prime topic for Lepage to explore, but tattooing appears only once again and then merely in an incidental way.

The same is true of Xiao Ling’s work.  Her art is based on making paintings of cellphone photos she has taken of herself in periods of strong emotion.  The turning of personal emotion into public art would also seem to be a central Lepage topic since it involves an essential paradox.  Doesn’t the self-consciousness of taking the photo in some way destroy the naturalness of the emotion being felt?  Strangely, Lepage leaves this question completely undeveloped.  

Co-writers Michaud and Lepage are obsessed with the number three.  Pierre explains that the Chinese pictogram for river is made of three parallel lines.  Xiao Ling tells Claire that in the old days an unmarried woman with a child would set it afloat in the Yangtze River and let the Three Gorges decide its fate.  In one it would die, in the second it would find a new mother and in the third it would return home.  (Even though one aspect of the play concerns the conflict of old and new China, Michaud and Lepage never think to mention the Three Gorges Dam completed in 2006, which will literally obliterate the past for the sake of the future.)  Following on this imagery, the writers give the play three endings--two that seem to fit with what has gone before, one that laughably does not.  For some this will seem clever.  For others it will be deeply unsatisfying to have watched a story for two hours and realize that the show is really just an overelaborate joke.

If indeterminacy had been an inherent part of the subject matter, such ending would make sense.  In fact, indeterminacy is the opposite of what the story is about.  All three characters are searching for what they should do with their lives.  They have let themselves go with whatever happens but now they want to change for the better.  This makes the triple ending seem like a major cop-out.  Besides that, if Michaud and Lepage truly waned to explore multiple possibilities, they should know that mathematically there are more than three ways for the story to end.  Their ending requires that of a group of three, one or two go to Canada and the remainder stays in China.  That means that A and B, B and C or A and C can go.  It also means any of those pairs can stay making for six possible endings.  Since there is another person who must go or stay, that doubles the possible endings to twelve.  Thus, even the triple ending is another example of Lepage not fully grappling with the implications of his story.

What is much truer to the reality of the story are the three dance interludes choreographed and beautifully performed by Tai Wei Foo.  The first is a classical Chinese water sleeve dance where the dancer gathers up and casts out extremely long sleeves to creating swirling patterns.  The second is a dance inspired by The Red Detachment of Women from 1965, one of only eight works allowed in Mao’s China and meant to replace the classical forms.  The third is a synthesis of the two with Tai Wei Foo dressed in woman’s army fatigues but with long sleeves.  Together these three form a dance parable about the progress of China that has nothing to do with indeterminacy.  If only, Michaud and Lepage had imagined an ending that suggested a synthesis as the solution, the whole work would be much more satisfying.

As it is, one can enjoy The Blue Dragon for the beauty of its production alone.  Michel Gauthier’s two-storey set allows the top or bottom section to change in darkness allowing for surprisingly rapid changes in location.  The precision in the timing of David Leclerc’s masterful projections with the movement of elements of Gauthier’s set creates innumerable fantastic effects--an airport morphing into Pierre’s loft; separate section of the eight-sectioned set opening to reveal scenes between different characters, all gorgeously lit by Louis-Xavier Gagnon-Lebrun;  the interaction of Tai Wei Foo’s two water sleeve dances with Leclerc’s projections--one where she seems to paints the screen behind her with her sleeves, the other where she seems to scatter the falling snow in whirling patterns. 

If you have never seen a work directed by Robert Lepage, The Blue Dragon will give an excellent evidence why he is acclaimed worldwide for the genius of his stagecraft.  If you have seen many Lepage works before, you will find that unlike his best works, like The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994) or The Far Side of the Moon (2000), the stagecraft here functions primarily as an elaborate means of scene setting rather than as an integral part of telling a story.  Though you may long for more substance, it is always possible to admire beauty for its own sake.      

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Tai Wei Foo. ©2011 Erick Labbé.

For tickets, visit www.mirvish.com.