Tag: Yellow Earth Theatre

Forgotten at the Arcola Theatre review ****

Forgotten

Arcola Theatre, 10th November 2018

I was much taken, if not entirely convinced, by the British East Asian Yellow Earth Theatre company’s version of Tamburlaine at the Arcola 18 months ago. And this co-production, with Moongate, of a new play, Forgotten, by Daniel York Loh, which kicked off at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, sounded like it needed seeing.

Daniel York Loh looks like he is a busy fellow. When he is not writing he is acting, directing films or performing in a folk trio. Busy. Just like this play. It started off as a 5 minute script. It now runs to a couple of hours. Apparently his first draft ran to 300 pages. DYL has a lot to say and he means to say it. Mind you this is a story evidently worth telling. Giving a voice to the 140,000 Chinese labourers who left China to initially assist the French, and then the British, effort in WWI. Largely written out of history.

In trying to cram in as much of his research into these events as he can, the appalling famine and poverty blighting China at the turn into the C20, the hierarchical, violent and patriarchal village society, the volatile political situation and domination by foreign powers, the dream of escape and wealth, the Western view of China, and the Chinese view of the West, and Japan, at the time, the experience of the labourers in France and their shabby treatment, and their legacy, after the War, DYL offers a little too much exposition, a slight overdose of plot and leaves his characters looking a little too one-dimensional. Especially given only a six strong cast, (with some doubling up), the compact Arcola studio space and an experiment in form, namely having his band of villagers putting on a Chinese opera as they embark on their adventure.

So the cast and the creative team, director Kim Pearce, designer Emily Bailey, composer Liz Chi Yen Liew, lighting designer Jessica Hung Han Yun, sound designer Luke Swaffield and movement director Quang Kien Van had their work cut out to make this work.

Work it does though and this I think is largely down to the fact that, weaved into the important history lesson, there is a believable human drama here, especially when the friends get to the Western Front in the second act. The play begins at the end but I’ll keep schtum on that. The cast are performing an opera which tells the tale of a Miraculous Traveller, (I am afraid I know nothing about Chinese classical literature),  paralleling the story of the villagers. When all calms down we are in Horse Shoe Village in Shandong province in 1917 where Old Six (Michael Phong Le) and his wife Second Moon (Rebecca Boey) are struggling to earn enough to feed their young child. Big Dog (Camille Mallet de Chauny) is the village outcast, addicted to opium. Eunuch Lin (Zachary Hing) was castrated in a failed attempt to secure a position in the Emperor’s household. All are subject to the cruel whim of foul-mouthed Headman Zhang (Jon Chew). They agree to be recruited into the Chinese Labour Corps (from 1917 China declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary) meeting the educated Professor (Leo Wan), and when they get to France, Wild Swan (Jon Chew again, equally potty mouthed) along the way. 

Whilst there are battlefield scenes DYL wisely cuts these with other encounters and other characters, as well as the highly stylised opera, to offer multiple perspectives on the experience of the friends. This shines a little light on the more universal East Asian diaspora myth, “silent”, “hard-working” but largely disregarded and culturally held at arms length. 

A valuable, if slightly awkward epilogue, explains what happened to Shandong province after the war and how the Chinese contribution was, literally, painted over in the now largely Americanised Pantheon de la Guerre. (America has a long history of mocking the contribution of France in global conflict). China was properly shafted at Versailles. Most of the surviving CLC returned home, but a few thousand stayed to build a Chinese community in Paris. The British CLC were given a medal, but it was bronze, not the silver awarded to everyone else who fought. There is a cemetery at Noyelles-sur-Mer on the Somme which honours 842 CLC dead. 

So overall Forgotten is an ambitious play, generously and vigorously told by an excellent British East Asian cast (Leo Wan, in particular, is as good here as he was in Tamburlaine and The Great Wave, and I look forward to seeing Michael Phong Le again). Lucy Bailey’s set is effective, Kim Pearce’s direction manages to maintain the momentum even as the scenes jump around. It may not quite be the finished article but it definitely deserves a wider audience. I spy a couple of harsh reviews in the national press. Ignore them. 

Tamburlaine at the Arcola Theatre review ***

c6-tgghwyaafl_y

Tamburlaine

Arcola Theatre, 6th April 2017

In many ways this was a brave piece of theatre. Tamburlaine, in two parts, was Christopher Marlowe’s first performed solo play, written in his early 20s, and which changed the course of English drama and massively influenced all the big boys of Elizabethan/Jacobean drama including our Will. Blank verse with lots of tasty, hyperbolic flourish, big themes, heaps of action, proper heroes and villains. No wonder the punters loved him.

And obviously he, Marlowe,  was proper rock n roll – drink and baccy, gluttony, fighting, sexy times across the spectrum, heresy/atheism, conning, spying. Lust for life indeed. And this play is about the life and works of Mongol leader Timur (recast as Scythian), which mostly consisted of trying to conquer the entire known world, and who was also, I suspect, pretty rock n roll as well, and not a man plagued by self-doubt.

So no half measures here. Yellow Earth Theatre is a British East Asian company which has risen to the challenge in conjunction with young director Ng Choon Ping, who has adapted the plays to strip them back to a manageable couple of hours. In the Arcola’s smaller space with just a light wall, a few well chosen props and the taiko percussion of Joji Hirota, they do an admirable job of bringing the play to life. Given the streamlining of the text, the doubling/tripling/quadrupling of some of some characters and the abrupt shifts in location there are times when the action teeters towards a kind of hyped up, declamatory travelogue (Persia, Scythia, Egypt, Turkey, Africa, even Blighty gets a mention), but for the most part the cast does a great job in telling the story and particularly delivering the verse.

The production does capture the interplay between the personal and the geo-political and the tragedy of ambition. It also smartly draws out the innate conflict between differing world-views, Christian, Muslim and Judaism, and how these world-views serve the interests of power. This is not a play that goes easy on religion, and reminds us to beware not to underestimate a man on a mission, in this case being the “scourge of god” – the contemporary parallels are obvious. And it explores the inevitable disappointment of succession in dynastic family (always a potboiler though the solution to a workshy son here might strike some as rather drastic). Hard to single out from a uniformly strong cast but Lourdes Faberes as the eponymous, fearsome tyrant, and Leo Wan in multiple roles, caught my eye.

So all in all a fine effort which might have been better served by more resource. Anyway, Yellow Earth are now firmly on my radar. This is off on a tour to Oxford, Colchester and Birmingham in the next couple of weeks so definitely worth a look.

As an aside when I was a sad, friendless, little tween I had an unhealthy obsession with the rise of the Mongol Empire. It you are/were similar I highly recommend you seek out the film Mongol: The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan, a co-production led by a Russia directing team which explores the early life of its subject. Very satisfying.