September 29, 2011
The Golden Dragon is a Thai/Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant, located in an unnamed street, in an unidentified city, somewhere very far from the homes of all of the workers within. It is the central point, in and around which the web of interconnected stories, spun out by five hard working actors, playing a vast array of some twenty characters, is woven.
None of the actors is Asian, and none bears even the faintest resemblance to any of the other characters they play. From the offset, it is this incongruity that draws some of the first laughs of the performance. The script is funny too, if a little unsettling in its delivery, with dialogue interspersed with spoken stage direction and the numbered restaurant dish ingredient lists being recited. The combination of almost farcical character misappropriation, some slapstick sloshing around of various liquids, which leaves one of the actors utterly drenched before we’re fifteen minutes in, and even the opening premise of a scream-inducing toothache, which is causing an unwanted disturbance in the kitchen, leads the audience into a false notion that the levity will continue throughout.
As the stories unfold, the mini drama in the kitchen escalates uncontrollably and the lives of the restaurant staff and the inhabitants of the flats and shops in the close neighbourhood are revealed, far more tragic and disturbing tales emerge and the dark themes of the play are brought on to the brightly lit, white paper covered stage. There are moments of humour throughout – a hairy-chested scotsman struggling inelegantly to put on a slinky red halter neck dress, and an already beer-, water-, vodka- and fake blood-soaked female actress, playing a Chinese boy/business man/pilot, squirting yet more red gore at themselves, could hardly fail to raise a smile – but grim reality crept in and by the end of the play, a sombre sadness was the overwhelming sense, both on stage and in the auditorium.
At one point, we are introduced to the hungry cricket and the cruel ant and I can’t have been the only person in the audience who struggled at first to imagine how what hinted at being the telling of an ancient Chinese parable, might then be connected to this very contemporary story. Only as the play comes to an end and the whole web becomes apparent, did I realise that the story of the cricket and the ant is an analogy of the sex slave trade that, as much as we might hate to admit it, is a harsh reality of the times. The Golden Dragon voices the usually untold stories of the multitudes of abused, mistreated, misplaced, hidden and otherwise invisible people that globalisation has seen moving to our supposedly civilised society.
This is sometimes a funny, but not a fun play. The props and set are basic, but the symbolism is clever, complex and deep. The actors, although visually wrong in every role, are believable and engaging. The spinning and interlinking of the threads of each tale is subtle and finely done, but the story web that is created is not a pretty thing to behold.
None of the actors is Asian, and none bears even the faintest resemblance to any of the other characters they play. From the offset, it is this incongruity that draws some of the first laughs of the performance. The script is funny too, if a little unsettling in its delivery, with dialogue interspersed with spoken stage direction and the numbered restaurant dish ingredient lists being recited. The combination of almost farcical character misappropriation, some slapstick sloshing around of various liquids, which leaves one of the actors utterly drenched before we’re fifteen minutes in, and even the opening premise of a scream-inducing toothache, which is causing an unwanted disturbance in the kitchen, leads the audience into a false notion that the levity will continue throughout.
As the stories unfold, the mini drama in the kitchen escalates uncontrollably and the lives of the restaurant staff and the inhabitants of the flats and shops in the close neighbourhood are revealed, far more tragic and disturbing tales emerge and the dark themes of the play are brought on to the brightly lit, white paper covered stage. There are moments of humour throughout – a hairy-chested scotsman struggling inelegantly to put on a slinky red halter neck dress, and an already beer-, water-, vodka- and fake blood-soaked female actress, playing a Chinese boy/business man/pilot, squirting yet more red gore at themselves, could hardly fail to raise a smile – but grim reality crept in and by the end of the play, a sombre sadness was the overwhelming sense, both on stage and in the auditorium.
At one point, we are introduced to the hungry cricket and the cruel ant and I can’t have been the only person in the audience who struggled at first to imagine how what hinted at being the telling of an ancient Chinese parable, might then be connected to this very contemporary story. Only as the play comes to an end and the whole web becomes apparent, did I realise that the story of the cricket and the ant is an analogy of the sex slave trade that, as much as we might hate to admit it, is a harsh reality of the times. The Golden Dragon voices the usually untold stories of the multitudes of abused, mistreated, misplaced, hidden and otherwise invisible people that globalisation has seen moving to our supposedly civilised society.
This is sometimes a funny, but not a fun play. The props and set are basic, but the symbolism is clever, complex and deep. The actors, although visually wrong in every role, are believable and engaging. The spinning and interlinking of the threads of each tale is subtle and finely done, but the story web that is created is not a pretty thing to behold.