Peoples Republic of South Devon

Running the Silk Road (theatre review)

June 13th, 2008

- Running the Silk Road, Exeter Northcott, to Saturday June 14
posted by Phig Billy

Phig Billy here, doctor of gonzo cartooning and self-professed cultural connoisseur. I’m writing to give you all the low down on Running the Silk Road at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, a production by the British East Asian Yellow Earth Theatre company which has been touring the country and is playing at the Northcott for two more nights until Saturday June 14.

Essentially, the play tells two stories, interwoven thematically but presented in stylistically very different ways. The main narrative recounts the efforts of one British Chinese man to prove to his ex-fiancée that he really does value her above his thesis on Chinese mythology. Naturally, he does this by attempting to run the ancient Silk Road trading route to Beijing and raise money for the charity she works for: a charity which is concerned with helping the victims of flooding in China. He is accompanied on his adventure by his two British Muslim friends and his Chinese cousin. The secondary story is related as dreams and hallucinations of the main character and recounts the myths of humanity’s struggle against both the thunder god and then the onslaught of the ten suns.

Running the Silk Road is a curious beast: traditional Oriental spectacle and super-topical, politically-charged meditation, built around a story founded on good old fashioned themes of love, friendship and determination. Does it succeed? Certainly Paul Sirett [writer] and David Tse Ka-Shing [director and art director] cannot be faulted for the scope of their ambition. Depicting scenes in five countries and featuring dialogue in four languages, the play contains quotations from ancient Chinese literature and depicts monsters and characters from Chinese mythology via colourful costumes and puppets, song, dance, acrobatics and kung fu. And if that wasn’t enough, it also encompasses such diverse socio-political issues as [take a deep breath] multiculturalism, nationalism, dictatorship, militarism, civil war, Communism, global warming, international aid, tension between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, homosexuality, women’s rights, the exploitation of developing nations…

The treatment of these issues is essentially non-committal but refreshingly balanced and open. It is good for China, for instance, through the Chinese cousin character, to have the chance to respond to oft-voiced criticisms of its environmental policies. Facts like China’s development of the world’s first fully sustainable cities, or that the pollution per citizen in China is one third the level that it is in Britain, are valid points and seldom publicised in the British press. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feel that the drama was occasionally hampered by the sheer weight and frequency of issues raised. The way in which they are continually trowelled on felt heavy-handed and unnecessary to me.

That we feel for the four main characters and their plight in the midst of all this is testament to well written dialogue and superb performances. The actors are all well cast, natural and entirely convincing. I especially enjoyed Chia-Kuei Chen’s performance as the Chinese cousin. Despite the fact that most of his dialogue is in Mandarin, and the audience is therefore obliged to cast their eyes upwards for the subtitles, I found him to be absolutely magnetic, thoroughly endearing and intensely likeable.

In fact, personally speaking, the least successful element of the show was the spectacular Chinese bit, the element which beforehand made me most keen to see it. The mission statement of Yellow Earth Theatre has primarily been to showcase and celebrate traditional East Asian physical theatre, and in this case the model for the treatment of the psychedelic dream sequences is the Beijing Opera. However, elements of traditional Chinese art and drama are everywhere these days, you can even catch wuxia at the multiplex, and perhaps I suffered from having been spoiled by movies and shows like Shaolin: Wheel of Life. There was nothing here that I hadn’t seen before looking much cooler somewhere else. The magnificence of the various puppets similarly underwhelmed me: I suspect that the production lacked the budget to do justice to the director’s vision.

Nonetheless, I must at least entertain the possibility that if you have more of a social life than I do and don’t spend endless hours watching martial arts movies, perhaps you may not even know what wuxia means, then you might be more impressed. Certainly I overheard an elderly couple on my way out praising the grace of the performers. However, the element which I found absolutely whole-heartedly fascinating was the mythological subtext. I am not aware to what extent Sirett changed the stories which he is using or imported them relatively unaltered, nonetheless the relationships between the characters and monsters introduced and the events and themes of the main narrative are challenging and deeply thought-provoking.

In short, my only real criticism is that for hardcore fans of Chinese culture, which the play shall surely attract, it offers nothing which is really new. But I greatly enjoyed watching this play and I left the theatre with lots to think about with all my senses having been stimulated.

Entry Filed under: Arts