Review-Red Chamber in the Concrete Forest-Hong Kong Arts Festival
1-3-14
By: Meaghan McGurgan
Red Chamber in the Concrete Forest is not a good show. It’s a bad concept for a show, topped off with some terrible execution. It describes itself as “an empathetic view of three ladies of the night.” The show I was subjected to was hardly empathetic toward the female characters in the story. Playwright Wang Haoran had an opportunity to talk about the multitude of issues that sex workers and “ee-lais” in Hong Kong face: abuse from their managers, improper payment, isolation from society and their families, fear of STDs and the increasing HIV rate in Hong Kong. Instead Wang focused on the male protagonist in his script, which was a mistake because that guy is completely unlikeable.
The male lead in Red Chamber is a sex addict and not even a funny one, like David Duchovny’s character in Californication. He’s a sad, pathetic person who doesn’t know how to communicate with people and he’s obviously a total perv. How do I know this? The show opens with the 30 year old version of him going on a compensated date with a 17 year old girl dressed like a character from a Hentai movie.
Most of the sex scenes in Red Chamber are completely awkward and not in a funny way. The dialogue feels forced and the moans from the characters completely contrived. The moans from Li Ke sounded like pain rather than pleasure, making us wonder what kind of sex the characters were having. The lighting in the show is pretty awful. Most of the play was done under yellow gels which turned the Asian cast members orange. They looked like giant Oompa Loompas on stage.
The only redeeming quality of the show was the transitions and this owed entirely to the beautiful set created by Moon Yip Cheuk-tong. It was flexible, allowing for a multitude of arrangements of furniture and a variety of stage pictures. The symbolism in the set - gorgeous trees suspended above the stage with a bicycle and an umbrella - was far more poignant than anything in the story itself. These found objects would project shadows onto the silken white cyc walls. The repeated tattered mattress imagery in the set was also a beautiful detail. It was made especially ironic when the Girl stated in Scene 1, “It’s quite nice in here.”
Overall, this is what was wrong with Red Chamber in the Concrete Forest: it was a completely inaccurate male fantasy of the life of prostitutes. You could feel the audience’s disgust when the male lead convinced Wang Jing to not wear a condom. We don’t hear nearly enough about the ladies’ back-stories. They come across as playthings for the male leads rather than fully fleshed out characters. We spent far too much time swimming around in the male character’s misery to discover the true pain in the lives of Hong Kong’s ladies of the night.
PS Whoever thought it acceptable to do a two and half hour show without an intermission was crazy. It is cruel and unusual punishment to make your audience sit there for that long without a break.
Red Chamber in the Concrete Forest is sold out! For more information, click here.
Comments
joe blackshadow
Glad to read this review. Sounds like I'll have to do some retracting of a story idea I've been working on ;)
02 March 2014Y
Same pain with Romeo & Juliet: had to wait nearly two hours for the intermission to get away.
02 March 2014Errrin
And boom goes the dynamite. Wicked review!
02 March 2014Xi
The stupid running in circles. Horrible acting and costumes. The stupid theme that whores can bring us together. Worst show ever!!!!
03 March 2014