If there’s one show that you don’t want to miss this summer, it’s LAB Space’s presentation of Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, playing over the next two weekends.
In Carnage, which won the Tony Award for best play in 2009, director Jaime Zuniga has put together a strong, talented cast to meet the demands of a play where there are no small parts and no heroes. Two sets of parents, who meet to resolve a fight between their sons, quickly expose their own dysfunctional marriages in a loser-take-all match where all are basically on stage for a full 90 minutes.
Yong Hui-shurn (楊慧珊) plays Veronica, a writer determined to preserve civilization, its values and symbolic books. She drives the play by arranging the meeting. Derek Kwan (關顯揚) plays Michael, her husband, and a “Neanderthal-type” blue collar.
Photo courtesy of Cheng Yi Lee
On the opposing team is Alan, a busy lawyer played by Lawrence Ong (翁書強). He wants the mundane incident to be settled in 15 minutes so he can get back to his more important clients and work. Lesley Hu (胡世恩) plays Annette, his demure wife. Despite her initial reserved poise, she wreaks carnage by the play’s end.
The lines come fast and furious, and the play dissects not just marriage, but children, families and the point of existence. Each actor and actress has their moment of revelation and vulnerability as all four alternately contest in couple vs couple and gender vs gender battles where the veneer of civilization crumbles and even the symbolic books take a beating.
Making use of LAB Space’s flexible space, Zuniga skillfully stages this one-set play as a close, intimate theatre in the round where any seat is good as the four combatants move about as boxers in a ring. With four-letter words flying in criticism and retaliation, this is not a show for children.
We are “lumps of clay,” Michael jokes at the beginning, but what these four adult enfants terribles fashion by the play’s end is not the most promising. You will laugh, but also be forced to reflect.
■ The LAB Space (實演場), 3F, 9, Beitou Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市北投路一段9號3樓). Remaining shows are tomorrow and Sunday and July 1-3. All shows begin at 8pm, doors open 7:30pm. Tickets are available from NT$600 at: www.accupass.com/go/carnage; for more information, check: thelabtw.com.
Feb. 17 to Feb. 23 “Japanese city is bombed,” screamed the banner in bold capital letters spanning the front page of the US daily New Castle News on Feb. 24, 1938. This was big news across the globe, as Japan had not been bombarded since Western forces attacked Shimonoseki in 1864. “Numerous Japanese citizens were killed and injured today when eight Chinese planes bombed Taihoku, capital of Formosa, and other nearby cities in the first Chinese air raid anywhere in the Japanese empire,” the subhead clarified. The target was the Matsuyama Airfield (today’s Songshan Airport in Taipei), which
For decades, Taiwan Railway trains were built and serviced at the Taipei Railway Workshop, originally built on a flat piece of land far from the city center. As the city grew up around it, however, space became limited, flooding became more commonplace and the noise and air pollution from the workshop started to affect more and more people. Between 2011 and 2013, the workshop was moved to Taoyuan and the Taipei location was retired. Work on preserving this cultural asset began immediately and we now have a unique opportunity to see the birth of a museum. The Preparatory Office of National
China has begun recruiting for a planetary defense force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032. Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection. The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low — but growing — likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability
On Jan. 17, Beijing announced that it would allow residents of Shanghai and Fujian Province to visit Taiwan. The two sides are still working out the details. President William Lai (賴清德) has been promoting cross-strait tourism, perhaps to soften the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attitudes, perhaps as a sop to international and local opinion leaders. Likely the latter, since many observers understand that the twin drivers of cross-strait tourism — the belief that Chinese tourists will bring money into Taiwan, and the belief that tourism will create better relations — are both false. CHINESE TOURISM PIPE DREAM Back in July
RSS