| How Siamese is 'The King and I'? | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 11:50 pm EDT 07/07/18 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 11:37 pm EDT 07/07/18 | |
| In reply to: How Chinese is Soft Power? - MarkBearSF 10:40 pm EDT 07/07/18 | |
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| Rodgers & Hammerstein never visited Thailand, but came up with their world of 'The King and I'' through imagination. And so it is with David Henry Hwang, a Chinese-American, and Jeanine Tesori, an Italian-American, and ''Soft Power,'' their bold new musical about the culture clash between China and America. In fact, ''Soft Power'' is a playful inversion of ''The King and I.'' In the latter, you have Anna, a white woman teaching an Asian man about how his country should be run, and in the former, an Asian man tries to teach a white woman how her country should be run. ''Soft Power'' is both a love letter and a spoof of musicals. But in their zany fantasia, Hwang and Tesori also had to imagine what a Chinese musical might sound like in the future: 2066. Act II opens with a panel of Chinese artists looking back on N.Y. shows about ''singing cats'' and ''talking lions,'' while claiming the Chinese refined the artform. One of them says: ''We are capturing truth through imagination; that's how art works.'' Clearly, Hwang and Tesori know their song forms, so the Chinese movie exec's ballads, like ''Dutiful'' and ''Fuxing Park,'' have a more Asian-sounding theme and arrangement. Whereas the ''American'' songs run the gamut from Broadway showbiz (''Good Guy With a Gun'') to blues (''Democracy''). Finally, for the record, Conrad is American, having been born in Santa Maria, Calif. He grew up in Niceville, Fla. And though his military father is Filipino, he has said that he wasn't that familiar with that part of his heritage until he started did ''Here Lies Love,'' in which he played Filipino leader Ninoy Aquino. Like all Asian-American actors, he has played various ethnicities. In ''The King and I,'' he was Burmese; in ''Soft Power,'' he's Chinese. To my Chinese-American ears, Ricamora did a great job. In my BroadwayWorld interview with him, I even asked if he was doing a riff on Yul Brynner because of his clipped delivery (''What you mean?''), but it turns out that Conrad's never even seen Brynner in the 1956 movie. Etc., etc. |
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