"Salesman In China At The Stratford Festival" By Ontario Stage

The Stratford Festival has a major hit on its hands with the transcendent, Broadway-worthy world premiere of Salesman in China, by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy, directed by Sy. Now playing to full houses at the Avon Theatre, it is an imagined recreation of the events surrounding the production of Death of a Salesman in Beijing in 1983, directed by Arthur Miller himself and starring famed Chinese actor Ying Ruocheng.

The play is based on autobiographies of Miller and Ying, both of which have been added to my reading list. The playwrights are careful to note in the programme that, while the events presented are accurate, many interactions in Salesman in China have been imagined.

The play unfolds in both English and Mandarin and the stage has been raised several feet to accommodate a black strip on which subtitles in both languages are projected. It works surprisingly well, although the lady seated next to me had trouble reading them until she snagged a booster cushion at intermission. The vertically challenged should take note and request a booster on entering the theatre.

Salesman in China is set in 1983 when China, having suffered the two disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution under Mao, was coming to its senses under Deng Xiaoping and, as we can see in retrospect, taking the first tentative steps that would bring it to the brink of world domination today.

Part of that journey involved opening up to the rest of the world, allowing Ying (the astonishing Singaporean actor Adrian Pang) to realize one of his dreams, playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman under the direction of Arthur Miller (a towering Tom McCamus). As Ying says, if China is to be a great nation it must build bridges to other great nations.

As it turns out, it’s not that simple. A major theme is stated early when Miller brushes aside concerns about some of the cultural specifics of Death of a Salesman. At base, he explains, it’s a play about fathers and sons. Indeed, so is Salesman in China. But again, it’s not so simple.

Miller and Ying are depicted as committed artists with deep respect for each other but each has ghosts haunting him. For Ying it’s memories of having failed his father, a university professor who fled to Taiwan after the revolution and who appears mockingly to Ying throughout the play. As if that wasn’t bad enough he can’t shake the memory of Auntie Zhao (Harriet Chung), beaten by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution…

For the full review, see here.

Stratford Festival review: Salesman in China is storytelling magic

Take it from playwright Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman was never a play about the American Dream or the slow dissolution of capitalism.

No, Miller’s generational epic was always a play about fathers and sons. Anything else, the playwright said, was happenstance, meaning the work could transcend any number of borders and cultural differences. Surely, even audiences in, say, China, could understand the throbbing heart at the centre of one of the most important American plays of all time.

That’s the premise of Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy’s crushing, gorgeous Salesman in China, playing in the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre until Oct. 26. Suggested by the memoirs of Miller and director Ying Ruocheng, the play recounts the Chinese premiere of Death of a Salesman in 1983 at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. That production was directed by Miller (portrayed here by Festival favourite Tom McCamus as an erratic, sensitive beast), and as Sy and Brodie tell it, problems emerged from the very first day of rehearsal. Chinese actors didn’t understand the concept of a travelling salesman, nor were they familiar with the life insurance peddled by Death of a Salesman’s protagonist, the famously suicidal Willy Loman.

But the premiere pushed ahead, led by Ruocheng, tenderly represented in Salesman in China by the stunning Adrian Pang 彭耀順. In Salesman in China, we watch Ruocheng and Miller collide and ricochet, each holding dark secrets close to their chests. When the men listen to one another, they’re the fastest of friends, two fathers trying their best to create art; when they barrel forward with the traditions prescribed to them by their respective cultures, they’re sworn adversaries.

Brodie and Sy, who also directs, have imbued Salesman in China with acres of care. At no point does the story feel like a Canadian, American or Chinese perspective of what happened in Beijing in 1983 — thanks to thoughtful dramaturgy and impeccable casting, Salesman in China offers equal weight to those three competing vantage points. The play is fully bilingual thanks to projected subtitles and translations by Fang Zhang, and most of the actors switch between Mandarin and English with ease, never losing emotional momentum to the relentless sprint of the language….

For the full article, see here.

"As Phantom of the Opera’s long run ends, performers reflect and say goodbye: ‘It was the show that everybody wanted to see’." By The Globe And Mail

No Broadway show is meant to last forever, though it once seemed that The Phantom of the Opera might be the one exception to that rule. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical about the universal desire for love first dazzled New York audiences in 1988, two years after it opened in the West End, and it quickly became a cultural phenomenon.

Despite decades of success and its title as the longest-running Broadway show, Phantom was not immune to the effects of the pandemic, and it was announced in September that it would soon come to a close. On April 16, 35 years and nearly 14,000 performances since its opening night, the exceptionally large cast, crew and orchestra will make magic happen in New York City’s Majestic Theatre one last time.

In honour of its impending final performance and the legacy it leaves behind, The Globe spoke to 10 Canadians who’ve been involved with the production – either on Broadway or in Toronto’s 10-year run of the show – about what it is that makes Phantom so enduring…

For the full article, see here.

"Harriet Chung brings a refreshing quality to Golden Lotus with her beautiful voice and graceful ballet moves. " by HKELD

Deviating from the original novel, Golden Lotus, the Musical composed by George Chiang represents a more unambiguous love tragedy with a more acceptable heroine. While briefly presented, the heroine’s frivolity or sexual desire (which characterizes the original novel’s version of her) is downplayed by turning her into a pathetic victim of beastly male appetites and the corrupted society, probably in a way to underscore her loyal love to Wu Sung….

For full article, see here.

Harriet Chung is nominated for an Ovation! Award for "Outstanding Choreography" for The King and I

The OVATION! Awards, presented by APPLAUSE! Musicals Society, aim to build community spirit and promote local musical theatre companies and productions while also celebrating the past year's outstanding musicals and performances, both professional and amateur. Read More

See full list of nominations here:
https://www.allianceforarts.com/blog/cast-your-vote-2014-ovation-awards