"A spare ticket is gone", "Qingdao please arrange", "Meixi Lake to ask for tour arrangements", "ask for the second round"... The drama "Murder on the Orient Express", jointly produced by the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center and the Mousetrap Drama Studio, recently premiered at 288 Anfu Road, with a ticket price of 100%, and the Mousetrap Drama Studio's Weibo homepage is full of messages from the audience.
As a well-deserved hit in 2019, "Murder on the Orient Express" once again verified the appeal of "Queen of Reasoning" Agatha among the audience, and the "Wang Bombing" lineup composed of Lu Liang, Xu Chengxian, Song Yining, Xu Xing, Yang Yi, Song Ruhui, Li Jianhua, Wei Chunguang, Wang Xiaobing and other powerful actors was even more rare, and the wonderful performance made the stage sparks splash.
Bad snowstorms, murders are happening... Britain's "Queen of Reasoning" Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express is a world-famous story. The meticulous process of solving the case and the delicate depiction of complex human nature are amazing. The story revolves around a murder that takes place on a luxury train "Orient Express", telling the story of the great detective Poirot on the murderous train, in a variety of passengers, through the fog, to find out the truth behind the scenes.
This big IP has been adapted and performed in countless different forms and has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Lin Yi, director and screenwriter of Chinese the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, challenged this suspense classic that has influenced generations.
The audience seems to be waiting for the clever and wise protagonist to finally gather everyone together, tell the reasoning process, and then pull out the real culprit in one fell swoop in the crowd of "sitting in rows" to reach the climax of the whole play, which has become a "ritual" that people who read or watch the play expect the highest. However, Lin Yi introduced that in order to meet the expectations of the audience, this time she did some special treatment at the beginning and end. For those who walk into the story of "Murder on the Orient Express" for the first time, the drama will tell them a full and logical story, and for those who know it, the stage will challenge their existing impressions and rediscover the new charm of IP.
In this "perfect" murder case, which is hailed as carried out from God's point of view, solving the case is not the most important thing, what is important is to see how the actors show their personal charm.
The first round of "Murder on the Orient Express" brought together many senior actors from the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center. Lü Liang provoked the beam and starred in the wise and humorous Belgian detective Ehkejule Poirot, and the rivalry between the actors in the play was sparkled and wonderful, which made the audience feast their eyes and be addicted.
On stage, sometimes it is Istanbul Station on a winter night, sometimes it is a luxurious train car with bright lights, sometimes it is a narrow and cramped train corridor, and the stage set is constantly switching between several scenes, and the story unfolds in this extremely realistic set. This is the result of director Lin Yi and stage designer Zhou Ling'er working together for more than half a year, from the impression of the story to the narrative focus, to the way of expression, they have constructed the "Oriental Express" that belongs to the stage step by step.
Stage designer Zhou Ling'er said that in the play, the space of the carriage and the corridor is an important factor in forming the event, so she uses the advantage of the stage to spread the train corridor flat as an important platform for narrating the story. The gorgeous carriage experiences the dilemma of hitting the snow, fading the glitz of neon, and staying cold in the snow slope, as if everything has stopped, and as if everything is just about to begin. The forest of snow slopes intermittently appears outside the car window, but when all the truth is revealed, as the scene changes, the audience will find that the snow scene has been turned upside down at some point, and the bare trunks stand on the sky, while the snow slope is upside down in the air. Illusion and truth are intertwined, what is justice? What is right or wrong? This puts Poirot in a dilemma and also has an impact on the audience's judgment.
Murder on the Orient Express will run until January 12, 2020. However, the first round of performances has already been hard to find.
Author: Tong Weijing
Edit: Xia Mu