Reviewed by Lisa Movius, Shanghai Editor
Ater its month-long premiere run
in January 2000, Last Winter has become a local
favorite, with a remake for TV and a sold out two day
revival in December. The Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center will
be presenting Last Winter for the third time from 22
to 24 February. Get your tickets now, as they'll go fast!
Address: 288 Anfu Lu
Tel: 6473-4567, 6473-0123
Price: Y80
Time: 7:15pm
Buy
tickets On-Line!
The team
behind the Shanghai Youth Theater's Last Winter
jokingly labeled this latest play a "three virgin"
production. Playwright Yu Rongjun, stage designer Sang
Qi, and actress Xue Jianing all make their debuts in Last
Winter. Losing their "virginity" in this tender,
touching drama proved, in this instance, to be relatively
painless.
Last Winter tells the story of Mr. Liu, an aging
actor and professor, who lives alone in a large Shanghai
flat. His wife passed away two years before, and his
only close friend, Lao Zhang, followed shortly
thereafter. His two adult children moved to the US, and
they never call or write. On the remembered advice of
Lao Zhang, he reluctantly rents out his extra room.
Exploding into his life come Li Cheng and Bai Lan, a young,
unmarried couple. Both are what locals call "Countryside
People," or outsiders without residence permits. Lacking
the coveted card, they are hard-pressed to find jobs or
housing. Bai Lan is young, naïve, and somewhat
excessively pert recent college graduate. She adoringly
places the older, more sophisticated and more cynical Li Cheng
on a pedestal. The enterprising Li works for a Japanese
company, which he hopes will facilitate his dreams of wealth
and success, but his manager's intrusive demands on his time
and energy increasingly become a wedge between Li Cheng and
Bai Lan.
The couple's cycles of nesting and bickering shatter Mr.
Liu's solitude and his routine. He complains of his
troubles in regular "phone calls" to Lao Zhang when (he
thinks) no one is watching, even as he becomes increasingly
dependent on the twosome. The play stresses the surrogate
father-daughter relationship between Liu and Bai Lan, but the
less examined brotherly camaraderie across generations between
Li Cheng and Mr. Liu emerges as more interesting and more
authentic. Generational conflict and the tension between
modern and traditional values are explored through the
three-way interaction between Mr. Liu, Bai Lan, and Li Cheng.
A subtly poignant moment comes towards the
conclusion, after the departures of Bai Lan and Li Cheng, as
Mr. Liu is sucked back into a void of loneliness all the more
acute after having been temporarily filled. Liu wanders
slowly around, straightening chairs and arranging various
objects.
The highlight of the play was the powerful performance by
veteran actor Xu Chenxian, one of Shanghai's most recognized
and renowned actors. Xu's capacity to infuse such
feeling of repressed pain into the relatively simple role of
Mr. Liu attests to his strong reputation. Ying Zuosheng,
looking like a stoutish Andy Lau, was also strong as Li Cheng,
fully communicating the character's superficial slickness
underscored by profound insecurity.
Xue Jianing, in the role of Bai Lan, proved the lightweight
of the three. Last Winter is her first professional
drama following numerous student productions. Out of
college just last year, Xue lacks the life experience
necessary to convey a strong range and depth of emotion.
She managed Bai Lan's perkiness well, but moments of angst and
crisis failed to convince.
The night I attended was dismally drizzly, and I didn't
expect much of a turnout. The small theater nevertheless
filled almost to capacity. Last Winter was billed
as a "mini drama", meaning one act, about an hour and a half
long, in a small space with a single set and a small cast and
crew. The format proved cozily intimate and appropriate
for the personal melodramas of Last Winter. The
actors enounce with the clearest standard Mandarin I've ever
heard, and foreigners with an intermediate or above level of
Chinese should have no trouble following most of the
dialogue. Last Winter is definitely worth seeing,
and we wish all the virgins many happy returns.
