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Anti-Theater - 8:36AM on 11/06/2011
"The Golden Dragon" is a one-act play by the contemporary German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig. Loosely a round, it partially narrates and partially acts out several stories -- all but one realistic -- concerning the goings-on in the kitchen of an oriental restaurant somewhere in Germany and the insect-like catacombs -- spare apartments, a convenience store -- in the adjoining space. Men play women, stage directions -- "pause," "slight pause" -- are read aloud, a German flight attendant brutalizes her boyfriend in an interior monologue, ants and others brutalize a cricket, and a Chinese family communicates with their undocumented son through images in the space left by the extraction of his decayed right incisor. Scenes are cross-cut in a cinema style. Amateur dentistry performed onstage illustrates, as Julia Child once said, that the guests never know what goes on in the kitchen.
The point of all this clearly isnt to draw viewers into an identification with the characters: the fourth wall stays firmly in place. Instead the characters are abstracted. The cuckolded husband in the striped shirt stands, in some sense, for all men. The sexless cricket stands, in some sense, for all women. The viewer is invited to observe and react. In this sense it reminds me of Peter Handkes 1966 "anti-play" "Offending the Audience." It rejects the traditional notion of theater, instead encouraging the audience to reflect on the idea of theater itself.
The acting in this production is excellent. The stage values are fine. My advice to you? Take advantage of the half-price offers or else wait for the movie.
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