The musical "The Myth of Love", which is currently being staged at the Majestic Theatre, brings one of Shanghai's most iconic streetscapes, Anfu Road, into the theater, and the stage installations are constantly changing in a way that reflects the colors of the city like a kaleidoscope.
The last scene is still an open-air coffee shop at the intersection of Anfu Road and Wukang Road, and as the stage turns, it instantly becomes the exquisite and comfortable home of Lao Bai, the protagonist of the story. The lively landscape of life and drama is blowing in the face, and urban men and women step out of the screen, singing jazz, dancing tango, laughing and scolding, and are alive and fragrant.
Back at the end of 2021, in the sluggish film market, "The Myth of Love" created a box office of 260 million, which sparked heated discussions for a while. This light comedy full of urban atmosphere and life atmosphere is sought after by young and middle-aged people in literature and art, and in Shanghai, where the story takes place, this movie is particularly popular, contributing more than 100 million box office cumulatively. If calculated based on 2.5 million moviegoers, about one out of every ten Shanghai citizens has watched "The Myth of Love".
Zhang Nan, the producer of the musical "The Myth of Love", watched the movie three times in a row, and she felt that the scenes in the film were "both realistic and dreamy", and the third time, she took her parents to the theater together: "There are many citizens in their fifties and sixties who watch and laugh in the theater. Zhang Nan realized that watching "The Myth of Love" seemed to have become a social activity, attracting many people who don't often go to the theater to enter the theater. This also made her have infinite associations: the film itself is more literary and artistic, and does not have such strong commercial attributes, if it is moved to the field of stage plays, can it have a broader market space?
In Zhang Nan's view, there are various categories on the current musical theater stage, including imported big IPs and small theaters, but themes like "The Myth of Love" are very scarce. "Some musicals tell grand narratives, some are suspenseful, but it's actually a bit far from our lives. "The Myth of Love" has a strong comedy, you will feel relaxed when you watch it, and as a realistic story, it can enter the heart of every audience. ”
In the spring of the following year after the release of "The Myth of Love", the copyright cooperation was quickly reached. During last year's National Day, the musical "The Myth of Love" successfully premiered at Shanghai Cultural Square and received a high reputation. In May this year, as one of the repertoire of Shanghai Jing'an Drama Valley, the play was performed at the Majestic Theater for 21 consecutive performances. Zhang Nan revealed to Yicai that "The Myth of Love" will also open a new round of performances this year.
A good story is the foundation of a successful adaptation
Zhang Nan, the producer of the musical "The Myth of Love", and Xiao Shiyao, the screenwriter, expressed their love for the movie "The Myth of Love" in an interview with Yicai.
Xiao Shiyao feels that "The Myth of Love" is a lightweight movie: "It tells the story of a middle-aged man in Shanghai in a relaxed way. In addition to love, there are also some life situations. Such a perspective is relatively rare in entertainment works in recent years: "It is precisely because it talks about the love of middle-aged people, so it will be more mature." Everyone around Lao Bai is very vivid, forming a small ukiyo-e, reflecting a certain group of people in the city of Shanghai. ”
In Zhang Nan's view, "The Myth of Love" is not only about love, but also about the intergenerational relationship between Lao Bai and his son Bai Ge, the decades-long friendship between Lao Bai and Lao Wu, and the relationship between Miss Li, Gloria, and Beibei: "The three of them are very independent, each with their own charm, they appreciate each other, and the friendship gradually formed between them is also very charming." ”
In their opinion, the story is very brilliant and contemporary, which provides a solid textual basis for adapting it into a musical. From the very beginning, the main creator decided to keep the main body of the story, further extend the plot and character psychology, and amplify the comedy color.
In Xiao Shiyao's view, "The Myth of Love" is commercial, but director Shao Yihui did not choose to express contradictions in a sharp or direct way: "For example, Lao Bai, his career, family, and emotions actually have a lot of hidden contradictions. The film combines the urban atmosphere of Shanghai to tell the story, hiding the contradictions underwater. ”
Musicals are different from movies in that they need to bring contradictions to the surface and keep the audience drawn. The film tells the story in a way that is similar to prose poetry, and the stage pays attention to dramatic conflicts, it cannot use the lens language to express the inner life of the characters like the movie, and it must use a more externalized way to let the audience intuitively feel the dramatic tension. This does not mean that it should be turned into a "spilled dog blood" story. Jumping out of the linear narrative of the film, the musical "The Myth of Love" focuses on excavating and showing the inner contradictions of the characters and the inconsistencies of reality, such as in the climax paragraph, where everyone at the dinner table teases each other with each other's words, showing the concept of mutual respect for each other.
Blankness and openness are one of the charms of "The Myth of Love", such as whether Lao Wu really had a romantic encounter with Sophia Loren when he was young, and what kind of relationship Gloria and Lao Bai have, no clear answer is given. Each viewer enters the story with their own perspective and sees a different ending. This is preserved and amplified on the stage of the musical, forming an unsolved puzzle that leads to reverie after the play. For example, when Lao Wu recalled the story with Sophia Loren, Lao Bai teased this old friend: "You don't know that when Lao Wu was young, he was 800 degrees short-sighted. And Beibei on the side maintained her usual rational calmness: "It doesn't matter whether this matter is true or not, Lao Wu thinks it's okay." ”
The finale of the musical dismantles the "myth of love" into "today's love is tomorrow's myth". In Xiao Shiyao's view, although the movie does not directly point out what kind of love it wants to express, it can see everyone's emotional transformation from it: "For example, Miss Li went from not believing in love at the beginning to finally being willing to try, and we refined it into the main line of the musical, that is, no matter what age you are in, no matter what kind of emotional trauma you have experienced, you can always bravely embrace love, try love, and believe in love." ”
IP with cultural tourism attributes
Outside the theater, the streets are still bustling, and in the theater, the living room of Lao Bai's family is playing out the obsessive and ambiguous eating and drinking of men and women. The city's alleys and modern sophistication spread out on the stage, erasing the boundary between reality and drama.
"The Myth of Love" is aptly embedded in the fabric of the city of Shanghai. "People who grew up in this city seem to take everything for granted, everything is too familiar, and Shao Yihui, as a bystander, excavates the urban temperament more charming, and those seemingly trivial and meaningless city street scenes move me very much." Zhang Nan said.
Entering the theater, before the play has even begun, the audience will be attracted by the almost one-to-one replica of the buildings and streetscapes on the stage. If you look closely, many rich details of life are hidden inside. Wang Bin, the prop designer of the Shanghai Burlesque Troupe, completed the "cinematic" setting on the stage, and even under the close-up shot, each prop can stand up to scrutiny.
For example, there are many movies and music books on the bookshelf of Lao Bai's house to show the aesthetic character of the owner, Miss Li's home is an old house, and there are several families living in it, so there are several doorbells at the door, and the wall next to the stairs is mottled and damp, and plastic bags are hung everywhere. These details may be difficult to tell if you don't look at them very closely, but it is these details that make up the life of the city, giving people a visual sense of intimacy and authenticity. The audience is like being in it, living and laughing with the people on the stage.
Compared with the first round of performances, the stage and viewing space of the Majestic Theater are more compact, and the crew has also adjusted some stage schedules to shorten the distance between the "streets". In the song part, the main creative team once again amplified the color contrast of different genres, in the tone of jazz, tap, tango, rock, pop complement each other, the homophonic stalks of "chive eggplant" and "country knight", the shoe repair shop and coffee shop in the alley are in a corner, and the elegance complements the market, drama and life.
In Zhang Nan's view, the deep connection between "The Myth of Love" and the city of Shanghai makes it naturally have the attributes of cultural and tourism cooperation. Before the start of the performance of "The Myth of Love", the crew landed a pop-up store of "Lao Bai's Home" in a small villa in Zhang Yuan, and held a series of activities in this theater experience space, including a meeting with the main creator and a drama workshop, allowing the audience to experience all aspects of the creation of the musical and share interesting stories in front of and behind the scenes. On May 19th, the atrium of Grand Gateway Hang Lung Plaza will also hold a solo concert by Lao Bai, which is a true reproduction of the musical plot in reality.
Zhang Nan hopes that "The Myth of Love" will not only attract the original musical audience, but also attract some citizen audiences into the theater. As the executive producer of the stage play "Flowers", she is well aware of the difficulty of expanding the circle of theater audiences: "From the beginning of "Flowers" in 2017 to this year, in the past seven years, more and more citizens who have never had the experience of theater culture consumption have bought a ticket to enter the theater because of the story of "Flowers", and many of them are gray-haired elderly people in their seventies and eighties. ”
Zhang Nan noticed that the second round of performances of "The Myth of Love" has begun to attract groups other than the audience of musicals, and some audience members have brought their families to the theater to spend a relaxing and enjoyable time. During the May Day holiday, tourists from Beijing, Guangzhou, Inner Mongolia and other places dragged their suitcases to check in and watch the drama at the Majestic Theater, and experience the charm of the city's unique cultural products while traveling in Shanghai. In the future, "The Myth of Love" is expected to tour to other cities to promote the charm of Shanghainese musicals to a wider audience.
(This article is from Yicai)