Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land
Written and directed by
Stan Lai with improvisation from the cast. Stan Lai and Performance Workshop.
Taiwan. Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre. OzAsia Festival. November
9-10 2018.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
What a wonderfully clever and
ingeniously structured play Stan Lai’s Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land
is. With moving moments of poignant Naturalism,
ribald slapstick and mistaken identity, snatches of Chinese circus and acrobatics,
hilarious touches of classic Chinese theatre and sheer mayhem and madness Stan Lai’s reworked thirty year old classic is
a triumph of colour, movement and fantastic storytelling.
We are cajoled into the mystery
of expectation as the play opens with Jiang Bin Liu bidding a tender and
painful farewell to Yun Zhi Fan (Chu Jr-ying) against an old world Shanghai
backdrop. It is a moment of tenderness and love, played out at the end of the
devastating war with Japan, when Yun is about to return to her home . It is a
sorrowful parting with Jiang unable to return to his home, and forced to stay
in Shanghai with a promise to write.
 |
| Peach Blossom Land |
Suddenly, the director of the
scene and members of the company enter to reveal that the actors are engaged in
a memory play. To their surprise, another company invades the stage, ready to rehearse
their contemporary farce Peach Blossom
Land about a poor fisherman Lao Tao (Tang Tsung-Sheng), his wife Chun Hua
(Yeh Yu-te, and the boss Master Yuan (Chu Chung-heng) Tao’s wife is having an adulterous affair with
his boss, and he leaves to search for her in Peach Blossom Land, a mystical
world of fantasy and illusion.
What follows is a struggle by
both companies to occupy the stage with hilarious results. In addition, a lone
young woman (Lin Yu-Chou) wanders the stage in search of her lover, who never
turned up to meet her. It is a recipe for utter confusion and madness, but Stan
Lai and his Performance Workshop have created an immaculately staged
production, tightly directed, played with absolute conviction and control and transporting an enthralled audience into an emotional whirlpool. We feel for the
unfulfilled love of Yun and Jiang as she finally visits him at his hospital
bed after a separation of almost forty years, only to learn that they have both
been living in Taipei. We feel for Jiang’s long-suffering wife, whose true love
and loyal devotion was ironically unappreciated by the pining Jiang. 
On the other hand, the audience
explodes into fits of laughter at the foolish antics of deceived Tao and the
bawdy antics of his unfaithful wife and her lover. Through the pathos of Secret Love and the farcical shenanigans of Peach Blossom Land, backstage business carries on regardless with
backdrops flying in and out, people stumbling onto a scene, stage bloopers
interrupting the action of the scene and actors and crew caught up in the
turmoil, much to the delight of the audience, many of whom appeared Chinese and
could enjoy the performance without the need for the surtitles.
An astute and informed audience
member might detect the derivation of much of the play, reaching back o the
traditions of Peking Opera and Chinese legend. To the western eye, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land is as
fresh funny, touching and engaging as any contemporary western drama. The
lazzi tradition of Commedia and the Naturalism of Stanislavski inform the spirit of
this outstanding comedy-drama, a fitting highlight to bring the theatrical
offerings of the OzAsia Festival to a triumphant close.