CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: THE AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER/LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE CO-PRODUCTION OF THE ORPHAN OF ZHAO CATHRYN FAIRLEE Independent Scholar and Storyteller A new adaptation of The Orphan of Zhao was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and premiered at Stratford-upon-Avon, England, on October 30, 2012, using a script written by James Fenton.1 A co-production between the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) of San Francisco and the La Jolla Playhouse of La Jolla using Fenton’s script premiered June 4, 2014, in San Francisco, and a little more than a month later, on July 8, in La Jolla. I attended one of the San Francisco performances. For a variety of reasons, the RSC production was controversial, particularly with reference to the issue of casting. The California production of Fenton’s The Orphan of Zhao clearly tried to avoid some of the problems that the RSC production ran into. A Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) printing of Ji Junxiang’s 紀君祥 (fl. second half of the thirteenth century) The Orphan of Zhao (Zhao-shi gu’er 趙氏孤兒) exists. Since it consists of nothing but the arias that would have been sung by the lead actor, the version of Ji’s play that has been most familiar to both Chinese and Western readers has been a heavily edited version published by Zang Maoxun 臧懋循 (1550– 1620).2 The story Ji’s play tells makes use of historical figures who lived in the sixth century BCE. A retainer of the Zhao clan, Cheng Ying 程嬰, sacrifices his own son to save the life of the sole survivor of that clan and, when the time is right, reveals to the orphan that his foster-father, Tu’an Gu 屠安賈, is none other than the man who is responsible for the massacre of his clan. Interestingly enough, perhaps because Ji’s play got the reputation of being China’s Hamlet, it probably had a stronger reputation, among traditional Chinese plays, abroad rather than in China. # The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2015 DOI: 10.1179/0193777415Z.00000000031 1 A version of Fenton’s script has been published: James Fenton, The Orphan of Zhao (London: Faber and Faber, 2012). The title page includes the words, “based on traditional Chinese sources.” 2 Sets of translations of both versions were recently published by the same press: Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema, The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays: The Earliest Known Versions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), pp. 49–111 (Fenton had access to unpublished versions of their translation) and Pi-Twan Huang and Wai-Yee Li’s translations in C. T. Hsia, Wai-Yee Li, and George Kao, eds., The Columbia Anthology of Yuan Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 17–72. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 34.1 (July 2015): 73–77 Recent versions in China include spoken drama (huaju 話劇) versions that call into question the valorization of revenge that is at the heart of Ji’s play,3 a feature film directed by Chen Kaige 陳凱歌 known abroad as Sacrifice that premiered in 2010,4 and a 41-episode TV miniseries entitled The Case of the Orphan of Zhao (Zhao-shi gu’er an 趙氏孤兒案) directed by Yan Jiangang 閻建鋼 that premiered in 2103.5 The Orphan of Zhao is the first Chinese play that the RSC has attempted to stage. Fenton is a well-known writer, poet, and former professor of poetry. While Ji Junxiang’s play is a form of opera structured around the strings of arias the main actor has to sing, those arias have no place in the RSC version of the play. To somewhat make up for that, Fenton created a “Ballad-Singer” who sings to the audience at the beginning of the two parts his script is divided into, and also in the penultimate scene. A character who does not appear in Ji’s play but who was prominent in Jingju 京劇 (Bejing opera) versions of the story, Cheng Ying’s wife (mother of the to-be-sacrificed son), sings a fourth song that Fenton wrote for the production.6 Another element in Fenton’s version that does not appear in Ji...