Run, Don't Walk
Robert Lepage’s ‘The Blue Dragon’ is funny, explosive, and unfinished
By Don Shirley
Robert Lepage is in town. As this column appears, only four performances remain of UCLA Live’s English language premiere of Lepage’s The Blue Dragon – a dazzlingly scenic and involving tale about two middle-aged French Canadians and a young Chinese artist, set primarily in contemporary Shanghai.
Head for UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, tout de suite. Lepage’s best work is here so infrequently and briefly, a sense of urgency is necessary.
The Blue Dragon is, in fact, Lepage’s Los Angeles debut as a stage actor. In 2000, he performed a two-night run in Irvine of his breathtaking the far side of the moon. But when the same show arrived at UCLA in 2002, another actor took his place. In The Blue Dragon, his performance is surprisingly but appropriately laconic, in creative contrast to the show’s sometimes explosive graphic style.
Lepage is better known as a director and writer. The biggest production he (or anyone?) has ever staged is KA, the Cirque du Soleil extravaganza at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It has been there for more than three years, performing twice a night, five days a week. Its initial budget was at least $150 million.
I finally saw KA a couple of months ago. It’s certainly lavish, but it’s also the most anonymous, remote Cirque show I’ve seen. I felt as if I were watching a greater than life-sized version of someone else’s video game – from afar. It has more narrative than most Cirque shows, including separated twins and arch-villains. Two months later, the story is mostly forgotten. While the scale and mobility of its spectacle are amazing, KA’s best quality is that it surely helps support Lepage’s more personal work.
The Blue Dragon is a sequel to a 1985 Lepage epic, The Dragon’s Trilogy. Lepage plays a Canadian artist, who left for China at the end of the Trilogy. Don’t worry if you didn’t see the prequel. I regret missing the Trilogy when it played UCLA in 1990, yet during The Blue Dragon I never felt as if I had come late to the party or wasn’t sure who was who.
It helps that there are only three characters. Lepage’s artist has been in China for two decades and now, in 2006, owns a Shanghai gallery. Marie Michaud, who collaborated with Lepage on the text, plays a middle-aged ad executive from Quebec – and a former wife of the expatriate – who arrives in China hoping to adopt a baby. Tai Wei Foo plays the gallery’s currently exhibited artist, who sometimes shares the gallery owner’s bed. She’s also The Blue Dragon’s magnetic dancer and choreographer.
The story’s more familiar components take place in an unfamiliar setting, at least for Westerners. It’s a setting that provides an ideal location to ponder the expatriate experience and clashing cultural sensibilities on a wide range of subjects. The last part of the play takes place in 2008, with references to the then-upcoming Olympics. It feels bracingly current.
Lepage is a master at enhancing the intimacy of live performance with the fluidity of cinematic style. Of course his wondrous scenic transitions require a budget of a certain size. Too often, when lesser stage productions attempt to replicate cinematic structure without the necessary resources, the performers move furniture almost as much as they act.
The Blue Dragon appears to be a work in progress. Lepage stages three endings, and others are conceivable. I hope he settles on one. Right now the final ending feels like a throwaway joke more than an additional way to stimulate the audience’s imagination. But at least it allows me to point out that The Blue Dragon is funny too – on top of being sad, beautiful, and utterly entrancing.
The Blue Dragon, UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, Westwood. (310) 825-2101. uclalive.org. Closes Saturday.
KA, MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas. (866) 774-7117. ka.com. No closing scheduled.
For more reviews, click on Currently Playing at lacitybeat.com.
Published: 11/19/2008
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