Made in China and (unfortunately) exported to the U.S.
Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Terracotta Warriors: Action musical. Written and directed by Dennis K. Law. (Sight, Sound & Action. Through Friday at Flint Center for Performing Arts, De Anza College, Cupertino. Tickets: $40-$95. (408) 998-8497. Also Wed.- Oct. 8. Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets: $45- $95. (510) 635-8497. And Oct. 11-15, Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., San Francisco. Tickets: $45-$102. (415) 512-7770. Two hours, 25 minutes.
www.sightsoundaction.com.)
Acrobatic dancers leap high, somersault in midair or engage in a passionately energetic pas de deux as recorded orchestral strings surge with shopworn Hollywood-score passion. Bevies of beauties in fabulous Qin Dynasty costumes parade in pageants as static as an under-rehearsed high school show. Dynamic Mongol and Chinese warriors execute ferocious martial arts choreography to what sounds like a take on the standard posse-chase galloping music from an old Western.
Little more than a week after the Suzhou Kun Opera Theatre's revelatory "Peony Pavilion" graced the Cal Performances series, the "Terracotta Warriors" that opened Tuesday at Cupertino's Flint Center looks more like a parody than another major import from China. It's the latter, though.
"Terracotta" is a huge, action-packed spectacle by Sight, Sound & Action, China's only privately owned theatrical company. Though previously seen in Canada, it's now receiving its U.S. premiere in a short tour that moves to Oakland's Paramount Theatre next week and then to San Francisco's Orpheum.
The blend of Chinese and Western influences is no accident either. Hyperbolically billed as "the greatest Chinese performing arts spectacle ever to tour North America," "Terracotta" is meant to be a new theatrical form its creator, Dennis K. Law, calls "action-musical." The idea, in brief, is to combine the more acrobatic elements of Chinese opera and other genres, as well as Chinese dance, design, stories and instruments, with some Broadway pizzazz, European tonalities and other Western influences.
The result, in "Terracotta," is an eye-popping array of sumptuous costumes, bursts of sharply executed acrobatic and martial arts activity and what looks like a very capable ensemble trapped in an ineptly conceived, frenetically plodding show. Yes, I know that sounds like an oxymoron. Law, a retired surgeon from Denver turned Beijing impresario, doesn't seem to realize that a package of two dozen very short, action-packed scenes is a recipe for audience attention deficit disorder.
Written, produced and directed by Law, "Terracotta" is the story of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, from the beginning of his reign through key historic episodes (such as building the Great Wall) to his burial with the huge army of terra-cotta warriors that protects his tomb. There's no dialogue. The story is told through more or less illustrative movement scenes, preceded by Supertitle synopses. Various members of Law's very large company alternate in all the principal roles.
There's a love interest, of course -- the tragic (but triumphant after death) tale of Emperor Qin's favorite concubine, Meng Ying (a lovely, sensuously flexible Zhao Shan, Tuesday), and her enslaved true love, Yang Ming (a smoldering, athletic Chen Li). Their story plays out in balletic duets, complete with dancing "water sleeves" (Zhang Jian Ming's and Jonathan Feng Han's choreography blending Chinese and Western moves to beguiling effect), accompanied by arias sung by a nearby soprano. The badly over-miked songs are fairly pedestrian, but soprano Zou Hui (Tuesday's vocalist) sells them with great focus and lovely, full tones.
There's attempted comic relief as well. Zhao Gao (Tian Ye, whose impressive acrobatic talents are underemployed until the curtain call), the emperor's eunuch, smirks and minces about to occasional comic effect. Liu Nanxi, as the Queen Mother, and Li Xin (a soldier) execute a very funny, acrobatic copulation dance.
The carved wooden screens and painted backdrops (palaces, the Great Wall, a sandy desert) of Tu Ju Hua's sets are impressive. Most of Mo Xiao Min's imperial, warrior and concubine costumes are gloriously ornate. The bursts of acrobatics and martial arts ("action choreography" by Fan Dong Yu and Liang Huiling) are expertly performed, if tiresomely repetitive. Consummate percussionist Jin Tao provides dynamic live accompaniment.
Unfortunately, Jin's contributions are often subsumed in the banal waves of Hao Wei Ya's recorded score, which, to my ears, sounds like a synthesis of bad Hollywood and Soviet film music, with occasional lyrical relief. Though Sun Wen Long cuts a commanding figure as the emperor, and moves with astonishing definition in his energetic dance scenes, he has to spend too much time looking melodramatic in Law's flat, inchoate stagings.
At least the lovers Meng Ying and Yang Ming are as made for each other as, well ... yin and yang. Zhao's anguished solo over the corpse of her lover, her impossibly long sleeves cutting dramatic patterns through space, is one of too few riveting moments in the show. So, counterintuitively, is the explosively acrobatic curtain call. But it's too little too late. "Terracotta" has long since revealed its feet of clay.