unexpectedly being trendy
Jul. 5th, 2007 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janne_dSo last Friday night I went and saw the second ever performance of Monkey: Journey to the West at the Manchester International Festival (oddly, the premiere was sold out...). A 16th century classic Chinese legend retold in opera, dance and martial arts, by a Chinese director called Chen Shi-Zheng, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett.
And now it has been reviewed in the Observer, and the Times, and the Independent and had a whole documentary devoted to its creation on the BBC. For possibly the first time in my life, I am ahead of the crowd here. A very odd feeling indeed to have seen something that is so new that the critics are still talking about it.
It was very cool of course - the music was very good, I still catch myself with little snatches in my head and some of it was really quite out there. From the documentary it seems they were using some pretty unusual intruments as well as the traditional Chinese and orchestra ones. The set and costume design was gorgeous and the animated bits were amazing. And the cast were great too, with circus tricks mixed in with martial arts and singing, and the man playing Monkey himself was fabulous.
The only slight problem was that the subtitles for the wholly Mandarin dialogue and lyrics were a bit... erratic. Sometimes they didn't match the person speaking, sometimes someone would speak for a bit and not get subtitled at all! But there was so much to listen to and look at that it didn't really matter that the story was a bit incomprehensible.
Most enjoyable all together, and I now feel quite smug at having seen it before (nearly) everyone else.
And now it has been reviewed in the Observer, and the Times, and the Independent and had a whole documentary devoted to its creation on the BBC. For possibly the first time in my life, I am ahead of the crowd here. A very odd feeling indeed to have seen something that is so new that the critics are still talking about it.
It was very cool of course - the music was very good, I still catch myself with little snatches in my head and some of it was really quite out there. From the documentary it seems they were using some pretty unusual intruments as well as the traditional Chinese and orchestra ones. The set and costume design was gorgeous and the animated bits were amazing. And the cast were great too, with circus tricks mixed in with martial arts and singing, and the man playing Monkey himself was fabulous.
The only slight problem was that the subtitles for the wholly Mandarin dialogue and lyrics were a bit... erratic. Sometimes they didn't match the person speaking, sometimes someone would speak for a bit and not get subtitled at all! But there was so much to listen to and look at that it didn't really matter that the story was a bit incomprehensible.
Most enjoyable all together, and I now feel quite smug at having seen it before (nearly) everyone else.