BWW Reviews: OzAsia Festival 2013: FIGHT THE LANDLORD is a Surreal Night of Card Playing

Reviewed Tuesday 17th September 2013

Her Majesty's Theatre's stage is turned into an intimate theatre in the round, with a maze of bamboo to be traversed by the incoming audience, the arrival in the centre revealing a large round table at which sit three young ladies in panda outfits, shuffling decks of cards. Some of the audience join them at the table and are given cards to shuffle. The remainder of the audience are seated in two more concentric circles back from the table. A large chandelier is above the table and numerous other small lamps are suspended over the rest of the space. Several screens are around the outside of the circle so that at least one can be seen by every audience member, and these are used to display the English interpretations, as the performance is in Mandarin. This whole arrangement is the joint design of Aedin Cosgrove and Gao Yiguang.

The production is a joint effort between Ireland's Pan Pan Theatre and Beijing's Square Moon Culture with a script by Sun Yue who is also one of the three performers, along with Wang Jinglei and Zhu Yutong. This piece of absurdist theatre attracted a good many people who, clearly, spoke Mandarin, attested to by the instant laughter, as opposed to that which was slightly delayed, from those who had to read the translations.

Dou Dizhu, or Fight the Landlord, is a popular card game for three players in which bidding decides who becomes the landlord. The other two become farmers and they team up to try to beat the landlord to be the first to shed all of their cards. Either of The Farmers can empty their hands for The Farmer team to win. It has become a popular game for members of Generation Y, who are probably not aware of the game's origin and original context. The three panda-girls complain of being bored and tired, and so they start to play cards, each round of the game separating interludes of conversation.

After each shuffling, the deck is placed in the centre of the table, the three stretching awkwardly across to reach them, taking a card each until they are gone. The bidding for the position of Landlord is carried out and the game begins, each slapping down their discards until one wins. From time to time during the performance they slip beneath the table and pop up again, having swapped seats, and towards the end they remove the panda suits and appear in everyday clothes. As they play their relationships and characters change as they play a range of roles and discuss numerous topics relevant to modern China, but with some degree of universal interest.

The production was directed by Pan Pan's Gavin Quinn and has a great deal of physical theatre, as well as singing, dance moves, and even a somersault. This adds a lot of visual interest to the performance, complementing the very funny dialogue, within which are serious commentaries on life today.

The conversations cover such diverse subject as the need to marry before a certain age, the cost of housing, and the limited properties available, gossip asbout celebrities, job interviews, facing up to a potential in-law, corruption, Communism, the Internet and much more. Although taken from a Chinese viewpoint most of the script hit the funny bone of everybody and sent us all out smiling wryly at things that hit home on a personal level. This is another of those interesting shows that we get in the OzAsia Festival that leave you with something to think about after.

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