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Puccini’s final unfinished opera, Turandot, will be revived at the Arcola this summer in a radical and confronting retelling. Spearheaded by a team of award-winning creatives and artists from the Asian diaspora, this unnervingly relevant reinterpretation tackles head-on the work’s orientalist tropes and reflects on the new role the Far East plays as a modern, technological superpower.
Employing a scenography by Ingrid Hu and cutting-edge video design by Erin Guan, Puccini’s Turandot is plunged into a digital dystopia. This reimagining explores the toxicity of online obsession in the face of human tragedy. No longer a real woman, the imperious Turandot (Reiko Fukuda) is repositioned as a digital fantasy princess, carved from the online world of fetish and erotica, who lures Calaf (James Liu) into an addictive, virtual hellscape as he struggles to return to reality.
Turandot was essentially banned in China for most of the twentieth century; this new production co-directed by Olivier Award nominated librettist Becca Marriott and Southeast Asian director-writer Iskandar R. Sharazuddin aims to challenge racist stereotypes that paint East Asian women as either subservient, cruel, or hyper-sexual as well as the historic and contemporary use of Yellowface in theatre, opera, and on-screen.
What a year! I pulled out my notebook over a hundred times and came away, more often not, with a happy heart. Below is a condensed list of the very best - and worst - that I saw.
The thrill of operatic voices singing up close and personal in a radical re-interpretation of an opera ripe for bringing into the 21st century
An all East and South East Asian (ESEA) cast has been announced for Turandot at Grimeborn Opera Festival this August. This marks the first time in the UK that a professional production of Puccini’s final opera, which is set in China and has its roots in Central and East Asian literature, has a full cast from the Asian diaspora.
Mark Rylance returns to the West End this summer in Dr Semmelweis opening at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 11 July, with previews from 29 June, and running until Saturday 7 October.
Arcola Theatre has announced the full programme of productions in the 2023 Grimeborn Opera Festival, which is returning for its 16th year.