"Red represents a passion, a romance, but it is not an ordinary romance, it is a dangerous romance; black is first and foremost an anti-freedom, anti-inner thing, but at the same time it has a kind of calmness that returns to dust and earth."
--Meng Jinghui
In the face of painful and persistent searching up and down, should we choose self-salvation or self-destruction? How can a few happiness in the midst of a change of fate be touched? As the banner of China's "avant-garde theater" in the past two decades, Meng Jinghui's works will always receive widespread attention from the theater industry as soon as they are born.
On October 15, 2021, Meng Jinghui's annual epic masterpiece "The Red and the Black" as the opening drama of the Wuzhen Drama Festival, stunning four seats, a ticket is difficult to find, that night more than 1,000 audiences in the Wuzhen Grand Theater witnessed a century-long hymn of life, this restoration of the French writer Stendhal's most prestigious century-old masterpiece is destined to receive international standard applause.
The Red and the Black was the first critical realist masterpiece of Nineteenth-century European literature, and since its publication in 1830, it has won the hearts of generations of readers and is still recognized today as one of the most brilliant and exquisite artistic jewels in the crown of European literature. The French writer Stendhal far exceeded the level of contemporaries in the excavation of psychological depth, and created a precedent for "stream-of-consciousness novels" and "psychological novels" in later generations. The tortuous journey of personal destiny in the flood tide of the times, the repeated contradictions and entanglements of ideals and reality, the fleeting happiness of a small number of people... All of this will present a new era of meaning with life tension through the magnifying glass of Meng's aesthetics.
Meng Jinghui said,
"Today's young people don't have time to read, so I read it for them and then show it on stage to show everyone how beautiful it is."
Of course, faithful to the original work is not to be faithful to its plot, but to be loyal to its most important energy, value, and mental state, to find the part that interests modern people,
"He's not interested, and you're fake."
At first glance, this is still the familiar Meng Jinghui: we can still see the familiar shouting, tearing, lifting the table, joking, games, monologues, and the use of play-within-a-play. But there is also a strange taste in the familiar. This time, he made some trade-offs following the original book, focusing on the emotional drama of three people, more accurately, lust.
"We also rehearsed according to the logic of Stendhal's play, the red scene, the black scene, and then the red and black battles mixed. But I think that light, red and black is not so simple. ”
Therefore, Meng Jinghui chose to interpret this classic again from a more macro, universal and more basic perspective.
Meng Jinghui uses humorous, sarcastic and romantic narrative methods to present a unique pleasure of psychological lust in a weightless manner, which is the most detailed and profound exploration of the theme of lust. There is almost no depiction of lust in the original work, but the carnality and animality transformed by emotion are Meng Jinghui's Freudian answer to "The Red and the Black" - only the deepest erotic entanglement, jealousy, hurt and naked desire for physical desire are the driving force behind Jullien's destruction. For fans of the original work, it is not an easy task to accept such an adaptation, it is no longer a "1830-year-old thing", no longer a prophecy book of the French July Revolution, no longer a magnificent history of personal ambition, it is still cruel and true, but whether it can be understood and recognized, it also needs to be verified by the audience personally.
Zhang Wu, a visual artist who created nearly 40 stage masterpieces for Meng Jinghui, used a hundred giant steel brackets to build a three-story desire pavilion, and as the emotional lighting constantly changes, in the surreal space built by light and shadow, all emotions are hidden in the light. Red is entangled in black, and black and red are mixed. Presented on the theatrical stage, "The Red and the Black" focuses more on the emotional entanglement between the three people, and the contradictions of Jullien, the pain of Madame de Rainer, and the jealousy of Mathilde are all played in the light and shadow. Zhang Yicheng will be entangled in the heart, the appearance of the calm "ice" interpretation is in place, and the performances of Mei Ting and Luo Huan have their own "fire".
With a large inner monologue, multiple Chinese switching, and a large number of action scheduling, Zhang Hancheng leads the audience into Yu Lian's inner world: in the face of painful and persistent seeking, the soul's up and down search, should we choose self-salvation or self-destruction? A real "Jullien", his impulses, thoughts, confusion, sinking and hope, are all struggles between capitalized history and one's growth.
Zhang Yicheng said:
"I know the director until now, for such a long time, "The Red and the Black" is the greatest kindness that Director Meng gives to the audience, he is very friendly to the audience, he rubs all his tenderness and all his inner softness in this play, you can't see that he has too many sharp things in it, this kind of power is also very, very rare. Don't try to understand what we're talking about, just feel it. ”
For Mei Ting, cooperating with Meng Jinghui is not only to challenge herself, but also to find a "danger" in the unique Meng's avant-garde aesthetic.
"To play Madame de Rainer is to accept the passion of her love, the burning of desire, the loss of not getting, the deep jealousy."
Mrs. De Rena, played by Mei Ting, grew up in the monastery, but her heart has always had more longings and yearning for love and life, and has always suppressed the "fire" in her heart, and the arrival of Jullien has made this fire burn down her psychological defense line. Although she is a special guest actor, Mei Ting has worked with Director Meng since 1999, and she is one of the oldest Meng actors, and her most intuitive feelings are:
"The stage directed by Meng Jinghui needs you to hold and release, you need to have a lot of energy to release, you must have this momentum."
The coldness of Madame de Rainer's appearance on stage is very different from the heat that follows, and Mei Ting's restrained and measured performance is a good interpretation of the role.
Luo Huan's explosive and free-flowing performance makes it easier for the audience to feel the "fire" of Mathilde from the inside out, she extends the advanced love escalator to Jullien in a chaos, but she is like Othello and almost loses her mind due to jealousy. Luo Huan believes that:
"Miss Mathilde is the biggest winner in the play, not that in the hearts of others, but probably in her own mind, she has reached her own most noble ideal state."
When Zhang Yicheng, Luo Huan, Li Zhihao, Yang Zuofu, Lü Jing, Guo Bingkun, Zhang Gongchang, Chen Yuxin, Liu Shuang, Zhang Yaqian and other members of the "Empty Flower Group" stood on the stage, there was a light that could not be hidden.
Source: Thoughtful