SPEED TRAVELLING IS HILARIOUS

Two very different globetrotters meet in “Crosstalk Travellers” – presented to a full 2,000-seat house at Singapore’s Esplanade Theatre during the recent Huayi: Chinese Festival of Arts.

Lu Ren, played by veteran stage actor Feng Yi-Gang, was the posh type. Cheng Ke, portrayed by movie star Qu Zhongheng, was the backpacker. 

Meeting at an island resort, they share their tales of wandering and muse about life in a string of funny scenes. It’s impossible, for example, to order Coke without ice at a fast-food restaurant in Tokyo. 

Retired business executive Ren loves travelling because of all the great food he encounters. Former tour guide Cheng Ke loves visiting art museums. 

Acclaimed Taiwanese playwright-director Stan Lai presented his two-hour play in Mandarin with no translation, but everyone – even the youngster seated next to me who laughed uproariously – was spellbound. 

Much credit goes to the sheer energy of the actors, with occasional help from Hsieh Ying-Hsuan, playing the resort receptionist and waitress, and the simple yet effective set and screen visuals.

The “crosstalk” of the title refers to the swift dialogue between the main characters, patterned after the traditional Chinese comic form xiangsheng. Lai and his company Performance Workshop have been experimenting with it since 1985, and he’s also learned there should be more jokes in the first act and more drama in the second.

It’s probably because of the sheer speed of the “crosstalk” that the Esplanade had no translation projected on a screen. Viewers who don’t speak Mandarin can’t understand everything, but they can still enjoy it.

“When we started in 1985 I’d say, ‘Let’s talk about fruit punch – go!’” Lai told me. “We’d start from nothing and then thematically link to other things, and we’d end up with a whole evening of about six comic scenes. We never intended to do a second show, but it got so popular that we make a new one about every four years.”

Lai quotes a Wall Street Journal reviewer who saw the original show in Taipei, “That Evening, We Performed Crosstalk”, and noted that the comedic tradition was now dealing with serious subject matter – in that case the death of culture.

“The play’s success has everything to do with these levels of complexity,” Lai recalled, paraphrasing the reviewer. “But in the end, there’s one thing that makes it so successful – it’s so funny that, from beginning to end, everyone is laughing.”

Lai pondered the duality of his approach.

“When you laugh about something very serious, it hurts too. Over the years I’ve been blessed to work with the best actors of our generation, and to make people laugh isn’t a big deal for them. But to make people laugh with a purpose, or a deeper meaning, is what I strive for.

“These days I do a lot of improvising – there’s always a lot of freedom for the actors. I devise a set outline, and the more I work with crosstalk, the more I discover that the freedom comes with that set perimeter. You need very strict borders and then the actors can be very free.”

“Crosstalk Travellers”, he said, “is mostly based on my personal experience – I’ve been to all the places mentioned in the play. It’s like my travelogue in crosstalk style.” 

Find out more about Taiwan’s Performance Workshop at www.PWShop.com.

 

MUSIC MOSAIC