The upcoming performance of Yasmina Reza's 1994 play Art by the Godot Theater Company has turned out to be something of a coup de theatre. Opening on Dec. 25 and originally scheduled for 16 performances in Taipei -- a long run by local standards. Tickets for the first seven performances are booked solid and only the most expensive remain for the rest.
Godot announced Tuesday that it would be returning for an additional six shows in Taipei in February after it has completed its countrywide tour. Tickets for these additional performances are also selling fast.
PHOTO: IAN BARTHOLOMEW, TAIPEI TIMES
Why the enthusiasm?
While Yasmina Reza has made something of a sensation in Europe and the US, she is a long way from theatrical greatness and while most reviews acknowledge her accessibility, they are also just a tad dismissive. A review in the British magazine The Spectator describes her as "intellectual theater lite."
While Art won the Moliere Award for Best Play, Best Production, and Best Author when it was first released, and has since proved popular in numerous translated productions, the real draw for Godot's production is that it features three of Taiwan's most distinguished comedians in a virtuoso peace of ensemble work.
The play has a cast of only three; but when these are Ku Bao-ming (
Each actor brings his own unique style to the show, and as director Liang Chih-ming (
The story is simple enough: Art is about the relationship between three friends, one who has bought an expensive modernist work. One of his friends despises him for this while the other tries to make peace between the two. What follows is a machine-gun battle of words, which is excruciatingly funning in its own right and is all the cleverer for the fact that most of the action is in the subtext. The modernist art work at the center of the debate serves merely as a catalyst for the three friends to assess their relationship -- hence the accusation of being "intellectual theater lite," for while it has pretensions to the high-brow, it is not rigorously intellectual.
While nobody will deny that Taiwan has theatrical talent, its perennial problem has been a lack of depth that tends to mar ambitious projects such as Ping-Fong's recent Wedding Memories, in which the stars absolutely overwhelm the rest of the cast. The small scale of the current production and the decision to cast three of the most highly sought after actors -- rather than letting one big name carry the publicity load for two lesser names -- has provided an opportunity to see some top-class action on stage.
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
On March 13 President William Lai (賴清德) gave a national security speech noting the 20th year since the passing of China’s Anti-Secession Law (反分裂國家法) in March 2005 that laid the legal groundwork for an invasion of Taiwan. That law, and other subsequent ones, are merely political theater created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have something to point to so they can claim “we have to do it, it is the law.” The president’s speech was somber and said: “By its actions, China already satisfies the definition of a ‘foreign hostile force’ as provided in the Anti-Infiltration Act, which unlike
Mirror mirror on the wall, what’s the fairest Disney live-action remake of them all? Wait, mirror. Hold on a second. Maybe choosing from the likes of Alice in Wonderland (2010), Mulan (2020) and The Lion King (2019) isn’t such a good idea. Mirror, on second thought, what’s on Netflix? Even the most devoted fans would have to acknowledge that these have not been the most illustrious illustrations of Disney magic. At their best (Pete’s Dragon? Cinderella?) they breathe life into old classics that could use a little updating. At their worst, well, blue Will Smith. Given the rapacious rate of remakes in modern
RSS