Happy Birthday to the Tauri!

Arthur Miller's "Broken Glass"

There was only a small audience last Saturday afternoon in York Theatre Royal for the overwhelming production of Miller's "Broken Glass". It deserves more attention.

It is one of Miller's later plays. The story presents a Jewish couple living in Brooklyn around 1938 when the persecution of Jews was taking place in the other end of the Atlantic ocean, Germany. On the one hand, it discusses the complicated problem of identity for Jews in a naked metaphor of sex: Philip (the husband) is sexually impotent and Sylvia (the wife) is sexually frustrated and suffering from a hysterical paralysis. On the other hand, the enormous controversy of anti-semitism in the 30's serves to explain the very trivial, but realistic and basic domestic conflicts.

The cast of York Theatre Royal is not unfamiliar, some of them were in the "innovative and modern" adaptation of "Macbeth" last year in the same theatre. That production of one of Shakespear's masterpieces might be still subject to criticism, but "Broken Glass" is much better or, at least to me, excellent. Damian Cruden, the director, has done a good job, and the cast is fantastic. The stage design is simple, clear and comfortable in spite of some technical problems of changes of scenes. The setting is true to the style of the 30's, but the stage designer cleverly brings the music to the audience by projecting the image of the cellist on the grand wall on the stage. Cello is such an instrument that perfectly resonates with Miller's plays.

I haven't read Miller's original but I believe this production successfully delivers the gloominess, suppression, frustration in human relationships that are very familiar to readers of the playwright's works.

It had a firm grip of me. I was in tears all the way through and almost screamed with the frustrated characters several times as the emotional highs and lows were so accurately repressed, excited and betrayed by the well-trained cast in Millerian style. The feelings of breathlessness and powerlessness haven't gone away from me.


Postscript: beautiful chandelier in York Theatre Royal

Support Traditional Chinese!


UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) announced to abolish the use of Traditional Chinese and stick to the use Simplified Chinese from 2008.

Is it another "cultural castration" or "cultural revolution" against the foundation of Asian culture?
No matter what the initial intention is, it is going to cause a cultural disaster!

Traditional Chinese is one of the most important legacies of Chinese Culture, or of the world.

The issue is not, and should not be, political but cultural.

Simplified Chinese may have simplified written characters in order to facilitate acquisition of language and to reduce population of illiteracy, but it alo simplifies the history that has been nourished and developed in the language itself. The "simple" form makes the language more accessible perhaps, but it results in an irrecoverable separation of the language from its own history.

Simplified characters are signs that have been separated from their objects, their signifieds, because in simplified forms we can hardly see how these words were created, in other words, it is never clear to us how these words are shaped and conceptualized.

Traditional Chinese preserves shapes, sounds, sides, and, most important of all, traces of the process of civilization. Every character conveys visual and audial imageries, through which we are allowed to see how ancestors perceived and understood the world.

Language in all forms should be preserved not simply because it is a tool of communication but because it is an artistic representation of human life.

Please follow the link below to read a petition in support of Traditional Chinese,
http://www.gopetition.com/region/237/8314.html

"Hay Fever"


Rachel and I were very disappointed that "Hay Fever" last night in Theatre Royal Haymarket was cancelled. Ms. Judi Dench (as Judith Bliss in the play) was suffering from a flu and couldn't make it on the stage. Hope she is recovering now! I didn't know the play stars lady Dench until I arrived the theatre. Looking at her smile on the flyer, I can feel and imagine how Judi will successfully bring Judith Bliss to life!

The original by Noel Coward is fascinating! Very sarcastic and intriguing, comical and tragic. It deals with a very popular issue in the early twentieth century: failed human relationships and dysfunctional communications especially those in the family. The hysterical ambiance, to me, is echoing that of Pinter, who is also one of my favorite playwrights.
I will manage to make it to see it again!