BWW Reviews: OZASIA FESTIVAL 2015: RED SORGHUM Opens Adelaide's OzAsia Festival

Reviewed Wednesday 3rd September 2015

Red Sorghum is a dance drama, adapted from the 1986 book of the same title by Shandong's Nobel Prize winning author, Mo Yan, that was also adapted as a film in 1987. This work was the winner of this year's Wenhua Prize, China's Ministry of Culture's highest award. The work takes the audience back to the 1930s to a small Shandong village where they grow red sorghum, the principal crop in the province's north western township of Gaomi, Mo Yan's hometown, from which, among its other uses, they make liquor.

The Qingdao Song and Dance Theatre, fifty performers, brought this highly acclaimed production to Adelaide for one performance only to open this year's OzAsia Festival, and it was an outstanding success.

The story of his grandmother and grandfather, from their first meeting up until the time when his father is still just a young boy, is told by the narrator. Jiu'er, who will become the grandmother, is sent to an arranged marriage with the old and leprous owner of the distillery. Meng Ning dances the central role of Jiu'er and is absolutely stunning in her ability to convey a vast range of moods and emotions through her body language and facial expressions. Jiu'er is a strong and complex character and Meng Ning conveys that perfectly.

Fubo Sun dances the role of the man who will eventually win her and become the grandfather. He has the difficult task of showing various aspects of the man, as a hero, as a drunk, as a seductive lover, and reconciling them all so that we accept that Jiu'er sees in him a man that she wants as a husband. He achieves this beautifully, particularly when dancing closely, intimately with Meng Ning. They have a wonderful rapport that convinces us of their love for each other.

Geng Wang is great as the lecherous leper, a tragi-comic character enough to make one cringe, to whom Jiu'er is to be married, but when he is found dead the next day in mysterious circumstances, the villagers accuse her of foul play. As his wife and in the absence of any other relations, though, she takes over the failing distillery and gets it back on its feet.

Uncle Arhat is a great help to her in the distillery and Jin Yu presents us with a pragmatic and reliable man that is clearly somebody that she can depend upon. He is there for her when she needs him most, in the absence of the grandfather, but quietly steps aside when he returns. There is an enormous dignity in Jin Yu's characterisation.

Xiao Lin Chen dances the role of Dou Guan, the boy who will grow up to be the narrator's father. She gives an energetic and youthful performance as the happy young boy, and then tugs at the heart strings when she sees her mother killed, filled with a combination of anger and sadness.

Everything changes, however, with the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 and an attack on the village. A young waiter, played by Li Lian Feng, is forced to inflict torture on Uncle Arhat and, when Jiu'er goes to comfort him and cut him down as he dies, she is shot dead. Grandfather takes Dou Guan, the father, away from the scene and the villagers are massacred, leaving only those two alive.

This powerful and moving work, wonderfully choreographed using the techniques of Chinese classical dance by Shibo Li and Fei Jia, is set to music by Cheng Yuan that features both traditional Chinese instruments and western orchestral instruments and is richly inventive and evocative. The sets appear and vanish, some pieces moved by the performers, with stunning lighting transforming them time and again.

There was so much offered in this sensational production and it was a remarkable and memorable work, ideally suited to open this year's event. Sadly, it only had one run, but the film of the book is being shown as part of the OzAsia on Screen section of the Festival and so you still have a chance to catch that.

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