Review-Two Dogs-NVAF
28-10-12
Editor's Note: Two Dogs presented by the New Vision Arts Festival and the National Theatre of China is one of the most visionary and controversial pieces they brought in this year. We really wanted to cover it, but in order to give it full compass coverage we sent in a Mandarin speaking reviewer and an English speaking reviewer to see the show. Many expats avoid going to Chinese theatre productions for fear they can't understand it. It is our hope to help the English speaking audience discover new and interesting pieces in the Chinese theatre scene.
By: Stephanie Ip
Much of Two Dogs was topical, but director Meng Jinghui was not worried. “We will play it by ear as to how the Hong Kong audience takes in the performance,” he said in an interview with New Vision Arts Festival.
And they did. A huge part of the play was improvised, and with a flexible script, the actors were free to change up the pace, disrupt the play to address the audience, and make timely jokes about current affairs, rendering each and every performance unique on its own.
The audience loved it. Almost everything the two actors, Liu Xiaoye and Han Pengyi, did elicited raucous laughter all around the theatre. Throughout the play, the audience was actively engaged. The actors had the lights turned back on and pointed out latecomers who were trying to discreetly reach their seats. They instructed the amused audience to applaud every time they cry, “Ah!” They begged for cash from the front row, amassing a huge collection of bags and clothing items on the stage by the end of the show.
They even incorporated Gangnam style, a viral dance move from Korean pop star Psy; and made a jab about the Japanese, when one of the actors remarked that he wanted to go to Japan to become a history and geography teacher.
But the play isn’t just for laughs. Meng calls it a “story framework that can stand on its own and can be presented with a highly individualistic touch.” Between the improvisations and rock music interjections, there is a loose plot based around two dogs called Wang Cai (“Wealthy”) and Lai Fu (“Lucky”), who leave their home in the country side to pursue their dreams in the city, but later find out that the human world is cruel and unforgiving.
The set was modern and minimal. The actors mostly imagined their props from thin air. Two contemporary Chinese art tapestries hung as backdrops, but other than that, nothing about the stage suggests the play was only about issues in China. The flawed human condition was a universal reality applicable anywhere in the world.
Episodes such as “Adoption by a wealthy family”, “In prison”, “Working as security guards” and “Hospital operation” allowed the actors to talk about different social issues and mildly criticize greed, class division and the wealth gap. During the “In prison” skit, one of the dogs was beaten up until he learned to cunningly (and hilariously) climb his way up, effectively poking fun at the hierarchy system in prisons.
Two Dogs first opened in September 2007 in Shanghai. Five years later, with more than 800 shows under their belts, the production has not lost steam, and, if anything, seems to have become more skilled at offering a freshly dynamic two-hour theatre experience to its broadening audience.
By: Tom Hope
So I don’t speak Mandarin (ok, a word or three, but a well-flung phrase defeats me every time). I’ve been warned ‘no surtitles – just a block (scene by scene) synopsis in the programme’. Instead it’s a one paragraph blurb. I’ve got more from five minutes internet browsing. So I’m relieved when I see a surtitling board. Then the board lights up with ‘PROLOGUE: improvisation’ – and that’s the way it stays for the next 20 minutes as the two ‘dogs’ do a prolonged warm-up act for their own show.
I get it when they teach the audience to applaud ‘on bark’ and when they take late-comers to task. I don’t get much else of what they say, so I take note instead of how – but for the cast’s Chinese-ness – this production seems ubiquitously Western: how the ‘dogs’ look (Mohican hair cuts, grunge shorts/t-shirts/jackets/ties at half-mast, trainer boots), what the side-of-stage lead-and-bass guitar band plays (loud rock riffs) and wears (t-shirts & jeans), how the stage looks (red oil drums, black tyres, cardboard-box dolls houses, abstractly painted pull-away rear drapes, and a drum kit). They may talk Chinese but the look is international.
Then the story starts and I get some surtitles – but only for a couple of minutes, because the two ‘dogs’ start ad-libbing – and the audience, already well laughed-up, is loving it loud, but at what exactly I can only guess.
Two Dogs is feted as ground-breaking Chinese theatre. To me, it’s like Mager and Smythe's In Search of Atlantis but longer, less musical and more larded with improvised stand-up routines: a ‘road play’ for the two protagonists (acting out all ‘other roles’) in a surreal struggle against all theatrical odds, on which are hung discursive interpolations on all manner of matters. Imagine a production of Waiting for Godot where the two tramps break off every 5 minutes to chat about ‘national education’, the health service, the shops in Mongkok etc. It’s street theatre writ large - closer to how Shakespeare was done in his day than the reverent renderings we get now.
And it worked just fine for the (99% Chinese) audience, who laughed in all the right (and wrong) places. And for me too, as I admired the poise and energy of the two ‘dogs’, the rock music interludes, the mimed replay of ‘the story so far’, the forays into the audience (‘to beg for our journey home’) – but, theatrically, my experience was essentially skin-deep and hardly a journey into the soul-scape of contemporary Chinese consciousness.
Certainly there was nothing to ‘not like’ about this production. The story line – of moving from country to city – is universal. The stage craft is assured and assuring. And the significance of the ‘dogs’ …
In the Chinese zodiac, the Dog is likeable, loyal, obedient, intelligent, straightforward and so on - a survivor, in any environment, with or without his man-master. The anthropomorphology at the core of this piece – dogs drinking cappuccinos, going to jail, working as security guards, writing home to mum – works, the same way that Top Cat or Animal Farm works. It’s comic capering but there’s serious stuff lurking there. I just couldn’t tell you too seriously what.
As for ground-breaking theatricality: well, to quote director Meng Jinghui in the programme interview, ‘it [incorporates] improvisation, Chinese traditional theatre, Italian commedia dell’arte and French masque theatre under one roof… It is not a new direction, but one that spearheads all the other modes [of development in Chinese language small theatre], which continue in this particular direction under its guidance.’ My own sense, as a non-Mandarin speaker, is that it’s an anarchic grab-bag of time-honoured theatrical devices with little inherent innovation of style or content. Which may of course be the key to its charm and secret of its success for audiences everywhere – but when it goes on an ‘international tour’ next year (as intimated by one of the ‘dogs’ in a close-out speech) I can’t see it working without internationalizing – whether into English or physical theatre or some other cleverness – the improvised interludes on which so much of its charm and success currently depend.
Two Dogs played at the City Hall Theatre 26-27 October. For more information please see the NVAF website.
Comments
Henry
I think this is an interesting thing to do with the Chinese shows in town. However, I think the pieces need a stronger edit on them to be shorter. This website is very text heavy. Short and sweet is normally the best policy.
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