Goodbye lover! This middle-class model couple finally tore through the veil of decency and warmth

"Bergman's play is like boiling porridge", this is the stage play director Guo Shixing's evaluation of the film master Bergman, Bergman interprets the understanding of the script in a concise way, not steaming and frying too hard, nor is it a big messy stew at the end of a pot, but a small fire slow boiling - a few hours later, the taste, all in this pot of porridge. From October 27 to 31, Bergman's classic "Marriage Situation", written and directed by Guo Shixing, will participate in the International Theater Invitational Exhibition at the China Grand Theatre, which is also one of the first works of Gulouxi Drama to be exhibited in Shanghai.

This work, born in the 1970s, is regarded as a classic because it still causes a stir in today's society – John and Marianne's married life is not the worst, but more universal or typical. John recalls the two of them when they were young, when Marianne was full of fantasies, "ghostly, bad temper", but now he thinks she is "unreasonable" and says to her, "How did you come up with such a ridiculous, hellish, inexplicable request". For Marianne, the young John was playful and eclectic, "taking pleasure in making her parents angry" and joining her in the Mayday carnival parade, but now she felt that he was "stupid, arrogant, clumsy" and "an out-and-out idiot".

Picture: Poster of "Marriage Situation" Official Picture

In Bergman's film "Married Life", the husband with a successful career finally said the words that he had hidden his heart for many years to his wife who had been with him for ten years. He voluntarily admitted that he was in love with someone else, fed up with the boring married life, and wanted to find the meaning of his life. And the wife did not let go. This middle-class model couple finally tore through the veil of decency and warmth: "I've wanted to get rid of you for four years." "I don't care to tell you how much I hate these two stupid, indulgent, brainless, lazy, selfish daughters."

Sociologist Diane Fairly, after studying the situations that create marital conflict, came to an unexpected conclusion: for people, the qualities that attracted them the most at first were often the shortcomings they hated the most. A female friend of her own complained that her husband never spent the weekends with her and was always busy at work, and when asked what characteristics of him attracted him at the beginning, she said that she was obsessed with him in high school because he was very motivated.

John was so excited about his future life from Marianne that he showed up to Marianne: "The only thing that attracts me is to leave it all." Do you know what I can't stand the most? All of this, go to his what we should do, what we must do, what we must consider, what your mother will think, what the children will say... All these bullshit down stove things. ”

Finally he found that the trivialities of life would not change because of a new partner, and the life of a new lover was also full of all kinds of dissatisfaction, at this time he could only helplessly establish his defenses, "learning to be satisfied with everything is meaningless" and "loneliness is inevitable", but he still couldn't help but confide in Marianne: "I rely on all those daily routines called home, family, regular life and peace and quiet." I'm tired of the loneliness of living in isolation. "The loneliness with Paula is worse than the real loneliness."

Bergman arranged a family structure for the couple, old and small. They not only have both parents, but also two daughters. This arrangement is not intended to express the ordinary happiness of the family's natural happiness, but precisely to reveal how modern marriage has deprived the relationship between the sexes of its connection to the past and the future.

The director Guo Shixing took Bergman's attitude to the extreme. The minimalist stage set, the anti-dramatic life performance, and the dialogue method that is almost whispered by the two people all point to one point: this is not a play, this is the daily life of you and me, and it is our inescapable "marriage situation". Although they both have a deep expectation of love and have made unremitting efforts to do so, they are close at hand, but they feel more and more in a state of isolation and confrontation. The simple and deep lighting and the delicate dialogue step by step pierce the true meaning of "marriage", discuss the universal and profound relationship between the two sexes, and lead the audience into the inner world of a couple. (Xinmin Evening News reporter Zhao Yue)