Meng Jinghui: Reinventing the Musical for Chinese Audiences

A recent report out from NPR sheds light on an interesting movement happening in China: the reinvention of the Western musical for Chinese audiences.  At the forefront of this effort is director Meng Jinghui, China's premiere avant-garde director, with his latest work and first musical, Murder in the Hanging Garden. The piece is about the "relentless grabbing for material goods and people's spiritual loss," Chinese style.

The musical tells the story of the disappearance of a real estate tycoon, Chairman Wang. After he goes missing, and it is believed that body parts found spewing from an ATM machine are his. The play unfolds with the search for his killer, complimented by a generous reward from Wang's wife. In the end, three different "killers" confess and it is discovered that Wang isn't even dead.

Writes Louisa Lim for NPR, "At a recent rehearsal, the director shepherds his actors around the stage. A 30-foot pair of female legs in high-heels protrudes from one wall. A giant hand creeps out of the opposite wall, while an enormous suit jacket dominates the back wall."

While to the western audience this scene reeks of performance art, the musical is actually being packaged as a more mainstream production in China.  Explains the show's lyricist, Sun Jian to NPR, "If you take Rent on stage in China, it doesn't make sense. We don't have bohemia, we don't have so many drug users or gay people, and we don't do threesomes. So we use your structure, and we put our lives into it."

Says Meng: ‘Broadway musicals are rubbish,' Meng has said. ‘I wanted to create my own rubbish, rather than fill the stage with rubbish from other countries.'

The production, which takes aim at China's emerging middle class and their obsession with fame and money in an absurd fashion at the same time features all the fixings of a mainstream commercial productions: a young cast, modern music and an urbane aesthetic.

To read the full report on NPR.com, click here.

Meng Jinghui, the most active drama director in Beijing, is famed for his innovative style. His name has become synonymous with the phrase "box-office hit." Meng has more than ten plays to his credit, including Si Fan, The Balcony, I Love xx, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Rhinoceros in Love, and Bootleg Faust, with each successive film resounding throughout the film community, winning praise and acclaim. The New York Times credited him with a "remarkable resurgence of spoken drama" in China. With his works, Meng has awakened many young people's love for drama and shaped their judgment of productions by other directors. A standard Meng-brand play inevitably includes singing and satire, a recent social or cultural event, and honest till-death-do-us-part pure love, which is the hook that ensures the loyalty of his young following.