Performance Review: The American Conservatory Theater/La Jolla Playhouse Co-Production of The Orphan of Zhao

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Notes

¹ A version of Fenton's script has been published: James Fenton, The Orphan of Zhao (London: Faber and Faber, 2012). The title page includes the words, “based on traditional Chinese sources.”

² Sets of translations of both versions were recently published by the same press: Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema, The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays: The Earliest Known Versions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), pp. 49–111 (Fenton had access to unpublished versions of their translation) and Pi-Twan Huang and Wai-Yee Li's translations in C. T. Hsia, Wai-Yee Li, and George Kao, eds., The Columbia Anthology of Yuan Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 17–72.

³ See Shiao-ling Yu, “To Revenge or Not to Revenge?: Seven Hundred Years of Transformations of The Orphan of Zhao,” CHINOPERL Papers 26 (2004–2005): 129–47, especially pp. 138–47.

⁴ Reviews of this film were quite mixed. For an example of an extremely negative one, see Lee Mack, “Review: Chen Kaige's Sacrifice Is Massively Disappointing,” http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/blog/review-chen-kaiges-sacrifice-is-massively-disappointing/, accessed March 20, 2015.

⁵ One of the major changes made in this version is to give Tu'an Gu a son that the orphan grows up with and becomes friends with.

⁶ Unlike the Jingju version, in which the wife, after much effort from Cheng Ying and his co-conspirator, Gongsun Chujiu 公孫杵臼, stops protesting the idea of giving up her son, Fenton has her remain resistant even as she agrees to give up her son. There is a fifth song, song by the general, Wei Jiang 魏絳, in scene 15.

⁷ Fenton and other members of the RSC creative team developing the play attended a workshop at the University of Michigan in March of 2012 designed to introduce them to various Chinese versions of the story.

⁸ It is not an innovation for Cheng Ying to commit suicide, once revenge has been gained. What is new is that Fenton does not allow the audience to forget about Cheng's son but instead ends the story with him. In many different interviews Fenton repeatedly says that the part of the Chinese play that he thought hardest to swallow for non-Chinese (and himself) is the lack of concern about the death of Cheng Ying's son in Ji's play.

⁹ A four-minute clip from Scene 8 (the interrogation of Cheng Ying by Han Jue 韓厥 as the former is trying to smuggle the orphan out of the palace), has been posted by the RSC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = Z8VhVhHkwh4&index = 8&list = PLSIxo_5qCKQiEdca6-VNqe1jZptKb_Q4, accessed March 20, 2015.

¹⁰ A chronology of the whole controversy compiled by Anna Chen (one of the RSC's fiercest and most persistent critics in this matter) with links to online material is available at http://www.annachen.co.uk/yellow-peril-orientalism/rsc-orphan-zhao-chronology, accessed March 20, 2015. The material introduced and made easily accessible on this site include the contents of an issue of Contemporary Theatre Review (24.2 [2014]) devoted to the controversy posted in October of 2014 and video of a roundtable on the issue co-sponsored by British East Asian Artists and Asian Performing Arts Forum on November 27, 2012.

¹¹ See https://www.facebook.com/thersc/posts/10151107942763235, accessed March 20, 2015.

¹² This press release was posted on the websites for both theaters, at http://www.act-sf.org/content/dam/act/2013-14%20Season/The_Orphan_of_Zhao/ACT_Press_Release_043014.pdf and accessed March 20, 2015. The casting call and audition announcement, however, labels all of the roles as open to “All Ethnicities.” See http://www.backstage.com/casting/the-orphan-of-zhao-5507/, accessed March 20, 2015.

¹³ Most of the information in the program is also available in the “Know before you go” booklet on the production produced by La Jolla Playhouse available at http://issuu.com/danamholliday/docs/zhao_kbyg?e = 3863981/8623950, accessed March 20, 2015.

¹⁴ Multiple roles were played by some of the actors.

¹⁵ The note was still available on the La Jolla Playhouse website as of March 20, 2015 (at http://www.lajollaplayhouse.org/orphan-of-zhao), but not on the ACT's website. It can also be found in the “Know before you go” booklet referenced above. In this note, Perloff's claims that Fenton's Orphan is best thought of as a “Chinese Caucasian Chalk Circle” is perhaps less meant to be taken seriously than as a way to introduce her claim that her production was influenced by Brecht.

¹⁶ A 51-second “sneak preview” of the production is still (as of March 20, 2015) available on the La Jolla Playhouse website, next to the “Director's Note.” Oddly enough, sometimes a version of Sacrifice with Vietnamese subtitles appears where the sneak preview should be. In any case, the sneak preview does allow a close-up look at some of the details of the production that reveals more nuance than was apparent to me from the back rows of the theater. For instance, from where I was sitting, B. D. Wong's costume and skin appeared to be uniformly beige in color and the turban he wore made him look bald, effects that did not work for me.

¹⁷ Volume 20, issue 7 of ACT's Words on Plays is on the co-production of Orphan and is available at http://www.act-sf.org/content/dam/act/education_department/words_on_plays/Orphan_WoP.pdf. On pp. 14–19, it includes an interview with Au Yong about the music for the play that includes three photos of instruments used in the production. This issue of Words on Plays also includes a statement by the set designer (p. 35) as well as photos of set-models (dispersed throughout), and an interview with the costume designer and costume director with costume sketches (pp. 25–34).

¹⁸ See p. 8 of the interview of Fenton included in the Words on Plays issue on Orphan referenced above on Fenton going to California to take part in the preparation of the production, and p. 9 on the moving of the interval.

¹⁹ See the first of six blog postings on the production by B. D. Wong, available at http://blog.act-sf.org/2014/06/zhao-business-orphan-diaries-of-bd-wong.html, accessed March 20, 2015.

²⁰ See the last of his blog posts, available at http://www.lajollaplayhouse.org/blog/zhao-business-the-orphan-diaries-of-bd-wong-part-6, accessed March 20, 2015.