Shanghai audiences have experienced both the traditional and avant-garde aspects of British drama in the past two years with "The Merchant of Venice", "The Red Shoes" and other masterpieces being performed on city stages.
One more is coming, showing the most contemporary experimental theatre of Britain -- Theatre O's "Three Dark Tales".
Winner of UK's Total Theatre Award 2000 and The Stage Newspaper Acting Excellence-Ensemble Award 2001, Theatre O have toured with "Three Dark Tales" in America, Australia, and New Zealand before coming to China.
The play is a tragi-comedy in three acts.
With Keatonesque slapstick, Marx Brothers hyperbole, big dance numbers and fresh and original language, the work presents the masterfully interwoven and macabre stories of three office colleagues whose home lives are in an advanced state of disintegration.
The tales, "Dream of Mr Tibble", "The Unfortunate Predicament of Amelia Sas" and "Frank's Wardrobe" are all extremely funny and touchingly tragic. The play interweaves their three lives into one, revealing the humanity in all of us with its happy-but-not-so-happy-ever-after ending.
It is the heart-warming and poignant story of three people whose lives are closely linked although they do not know it yet. It is about the everyday oppression that keep people down and wear them out - oppression that everyone dramatically and, occasionally, emphatically can overcome.
"Three Dark Tales" premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2000 and became the talk of the festival, receiving extraordinary reviews.
Theatre O is a national and international touring company founded by Joseph Alford in 1997 after he left the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
The company's theatrical style combines text, action, music, rhythm and dance. The company searches for the ideal theatrical representation of the human story, lifting productions out of the theatre and into the realms of the imagination.
7:15pm, December 5-9
Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre
288 Anfu Lu
Tel: 6473-0123, 6473-4567
150 yuan
(Shanghai Star December 3, 2002)
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