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As the old saying goes, "It is better to believe in a book than to have no book at all." "I think this should also be the attitude we should have towards foreign dramas."
Yesterday, the British original musical "Man Ghost Love" premiered in Beijing, following "The Phantom of the Theater" and "Romeo and Juliet" once again set off a wave of original musical theater.
If you were to ask me if "Man Is Haunted" or not, the one thing I would like to say most is that it is important to control expectations.
If your horizontal coordinates are Meng Jinghui's "First Love", Happy Twist's "If I'm Not Me", or even Jay Chou's "The Secret That Can't Be Said", then I can tell you very responsibly that "Man Ghost Love" is really a masterpiece.
But if you compare it to Phantom of the Theatre, Les Misérables, and Miss Saigon, then I can only answer that Ghost in The Shell is definitely not a master.
The emergence of a classic of the world depends on luck, the need for time, location, people, but exquisite work is not needed, only professional people need to do professional things. Obviously, "Man Ghost Love" belongs to the latter.
The most prominent advantage of the musical version of "Human Ghost Love" is that it comprehensively uses various sound and photoelectric means such as projection, LED, screen, etc., to realize the free conversion of the real world and the "spiritual space" on the stage. Advances in technology have made the 2011 musical more realistic in its special effects than the films of 21 years ago, and the classic romance film nominated for the Oscar that year is worth up to 5 cents in special effects compared to the musical. From this point of view, I still recommend that friends who want to go and see it try to buy the highest ticket price within their ability.
In addition to the area where the chandelier passes, the viewing experience on the other seats should not be much different. But "Man Ghost Love" is different, the opening LED video crosses the entire New York City with the perspective of Spider-Man, almost achieving a naked-eye 3D IMAX effect, directly giving me a dismount sitting in the corner of the second-floor box.
After that, director Matthew Vasius and special effects designer Paul Kiefer presented the audience with a number of magical transitions. For example, the male protagonist Sam was separated when he was killed; for example, Sam crossed the door for the first time after becoming a ghost; for example, Sam witnessed the ascension of a lady's soul in the hospital; for example, in the climax part, Sam borrowed the body of the black psychic medium to return the soul, and completed the "one-second switch" of the two characters in the dance with the female protagonist Molly...
Of course, in the special effects design and human shadow interaction, the most noteworthy is the passage where the subway meets the "seniors". The cover of multiple screens, the comprehensive use of front projection and back LED video, the perfect combination of high technology and actor positioning, it seems that there is really a subway passing through the stage, and the audience can freely switch perspectives to see the fight scenes of the two male actors in the subway. In this paragraph, the creator not only shows extraordinary brain holes and imagination, but also interprets to us the "craftsman spirit" of foreign dramatists.
But relying on science and technology alone cannot achieve a comprehensive victory in art, technology is only an assist, it can never replace the importance of "people-oriented".
On the stage of "Man's Ghost Love", technology is greater than people. In this musical, except for the pungent and pompous black psychic medium, who has an obvious personality, almost all the characters are unclear. The male protagonist is silly and sweet, the female protagonist is white lotus, you can't see the difference between this pair of young men and women and Romeo and Juliet, and even directly switch the background of the story to ancient China to become a "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai".
The characters do not have their own characteristics, the work loses a very important originality, and love can only be immortalized by originality. The lack of personality of the male and female protagonists directly leads to the fact that this musical that should have told the story of "love first" is more like a "prince's revenge", and the love thread is relegated to the side line due to the lack of personality.
I think this is a pity in the adaptation of this play, to know that the heroine of the original film is a modern woman with the spiritual characteristics of an independent artist, and the male protagonist is almost the original template for the financial warm man, and their light should not be obscured by the pleasing psychic medium.
Therefore, this "pot" screenwriter can not back, but the composer must back. After a classic movie is adapted into a musical, the only music that can be remembered by the audience is the original theme song of the movie. I would especially like to say to the composer unceremoniously on behalf of all the unsatisfied audiences – what do you want to do!
But, to be fair, in this pop-rock-based musical, the composition and arrangement are also considered to be as much as possible to incorporate different musical styles. Subway Ghosts sang two street-inspired raps, and several pieces of Psychic music had a strong Broadway jazz flavor. As a live band with only two keyboards, a reed, a drummer, a guitar, a bass and a cello on a worldwide tour, it was basically a performance on stage.
In addition, what makes me very puzzling is that Mai Mei ming designed the stage props for the heroine to make clay. Why didn't the director keep the classic "double plastic clay" of the opening of the film version? Once the front section is deleted, when Sam's soul returns to the desperate Molly and accompanies her in the same posture to shape the clay, it loses its intertextual relationship, and its dramatic tension is simply completely deprived. You must know that the two fingers in the wet clay interlocked, and then sounded the famous theme song "Unrestrained Melody", which is the most important reason why many literary and artistic young people fall in love with this story.
The lack of classic pictures will directly cause the audience to be dissatisfied, forming an irreparable loss. To take a few examples, in the 25th anniversary performance of "Miss Saigon", a huge amount of money was deliberately spent to increase the stage scene of American soldiers in a helicopter looking for gold, and the producers made it very clear in the documentary that the main purpose of this move was to meet the reasonable expectations of the audience. I think he has a point, and meeting reasonable expectations is crucial for IP series production.
Overall, "Man And Ghost" is a "longboard" long work. With the most sophisticated scientific and technological means and the most appropriate understanding of technology and stage art, it refreshes the Chinese audience's understanding of multimedia drama. At the very least, it can make the Chinese theater circle realize that "oh, the original technology should be played like this", and let the audience realize that "multimedia dramas that cannot do this level are hooligans", the above two points are crucial for Chinese dramas that are gradually tending to "take big for beauty" and "take expensive as good".
"The Ghost of Man" is also a work that is not short of "short board". Even if you deliberately look at it with a harsh eye like me, you must sincerely praise the overall completion of the person. Chinese companies with money and resources should introduce more such works, and if we find the wrong coordinates, we can only think that the roof is only the height of the table legs.
PS: Do you know why the stage version of the heroine's style abandoned the cool short black hair in the movie version to long blonde hair?
Because the coliseum is too far away, the short hair is easy to make the audience in the back row indistinguishable...
That's right, it's a cold joke.
Legal Counsel: Beijing Dongyou Law Firm
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