MEDIA AND REVIEWS

REVIEW

by Tim Benzie
Sydney Star Observer
17 June 2004

You've got to admire director Joseph Uchitel's chutzpah in choosing to stage an epic historical drama within the compact surrounds of Belvoir's Downstairs Theatre.

As it turns out Empress of China is as much character study as it is sprawling potboiler so, though we get little sense of the mammoth dimensions of the Forbidden City, the power games within shine in glorious close-up. Ruth Wolff's play tells of the particularly psychotic Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi (Mêmé Thorne), who ruled China in the late 1800s before handing power to her nephew Pu Yi ("the last emperor"). The drama focuses on her desperate attempts to resist the modernisation proposed by her nephew Emperor Kuang-Hsu (Rick Lau) and to drive out or slaughter all foreigners from what was then Peking.

Thorne laps up a role that makes Lady Macbeth look like Anne of Green Gables, but like most performances in the Downstairs Theatre it's pitched a little too high for the venue's dimensions. Her fellow cast members are also of varying levels of experience and skill, although it is the generally slow pacing that proves most distracting.

Despite such concerns, Empress of China is a fascinating play, with Wolff's fictional additions edging the drama towards allegory. Most notable is the character Shen Tai (Kaeng Chan), an itinerant actor arrested by Tzu-hsi for his royal impersonations. Tai is both Tzu-hsi's alter ego and a barometer of her political ambitions, as Tai morphs from peasant "everyman" to royal aide to Boxer fanatic to royal assassin. In one scene, the Empress insists the actor (in drag as Tzu-hsi) take her place during the Emperor's abdication so she can admire the tableau of her own life's drama.

Finally, the company deserves top marks for staging a play that for many would pose insurmountable challenges. Every character is Chinese, for instance, and the 1800s royal setting makes for some potentially expensive costumes and sets. A notice in the foyer by designer Karla Urizar is enlightening in this regard, a proud announcement that most of the costumes were made from materials purchased as Spotlight. They look fantastic, even if from the front row you can see every seam.

REBELS AGAINST HER LONG CLAWS

by Colin Rose
The Sun Herald
13 June 2004

This like watching Bernardo Bertolucci's epic wide-screen movie The Last Emperor on a laptop. In a miracle of miniturisation, director Joseph Uchitel has cramnmed a chronicle of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and the twilight of the Chinese empire onto the pocket stage of Belvoir St's studio space.

Indeed, you could think Ruth Wolff's Empress of China as a prequel to the Bertolucci movie. The play's villainous protagonist, the empress dowager Tzu-hsi (played with bullet-proof conviction by Meme Thorne), was the real power in turn-of-the-last-century China, not the opium-addled emperor Kuang-Hsu (Rick Lau).

Utterly ruthless, Tzu-hsi, Wolff suggests, used sexual guile and, when her looks started to fade, murder to consolidate and maintain her power. Plot and counterplot are played out in the Forbidden City, where the few fully functioning men who dare challenge Tzu-hsi's tyranny are but a snap of her imperial fingers away from joining Li Len-Ying (Jon Lam), the chief eunuch. Ouch.

A little less spelling out of the historical detail and a little more dramatic licence wouldn't have hurt Wolff's script.

The ruler of imperial China hangs on by her fingernails for her political life in a world of torture, war and eunuchs, reports Jacqui Taffel.

The ruler of imperial China hangs on by her fingernails for her political life in a world of torture, war and eunuchs, reports Jacqui Taffel.

The Dowager Empress of China's story is hard to beat for a cracking meteoric rise to power. Born in 1835, Tzu-Hsi was the Emperor's concubine by age 16, then scored the jackpot by providing his only surviving son.

When the Emperor died in 1861, her five-year-old boy was his successor, but Tzu-Hsi was one of those chosen to rule China until the new Emperor came of age. She clung to power for the next 50 years, through wars, rebellions, political challenges and pressure from foreign forces, until her death in 1908, aged 73.

It appears she was not a woman to cross. Her ways of expressing displeasure included castration, banishment, flinging people into wells or, as in the opening scene of Ruth Wolff's play Empress of China, feeding maggots to unsuspecting prisoners.

Since debuting in New York 20 years ago, the play has had various outings including a New York revival last year. Now Empress of China has its Australian premiere with East Coast Theatre Company's new production, which is part of Belvoir Street's B Sharp program.

A week before opening, director Joseph Uchitel watches a rehearsal of the maggot scene in a chilly Ultimo studio. Actor Meme Thorne radiates icy regality as the Empress even while wearing jeans, skivvy and a fleecy vest.

She turns to her chief eunuch as a prisoner retches: "I like that sound. It is a good sound.
It is the sound of a future friend."

Afterwards, relaxing in an old armchair pulled up to the heater, Thorne is chatty, friendly and distinctly unregal. Has it come easily, playing someone with absolute power?
Uchitel answers for her: "Oh yes."

They both laugh. Thorne does feels the role has come at the right time - 26 years' acting experience has given her the confidence to tackle it. She also responded to the character.

"My first reaction was as an actor - what a fantastic role, how meaty, how vile," Thorne says. "But I was also fascinated by her as a person. Her struggles as a woman and as a powerful being were obvious."

The play covers two pivotal years in Tzu-Hsi's reign, when foreign powers are beating at China's door, demanding trade and modernisation. The Empress fiercely resists what she sees as an invasion and a challenge to China's ancient traditions, failing to read the signs of inevitable progress.
The final siege she commands is her last, desperate, inhumane stand against these encroaching forces.

"She really felt she was doing the right thing," Thorne says. "She believed they were the only means that would keep China together. You may agree or disagree with it, but the fact that she went to that extreme and was true to herself to the very end, it certainly demands respect."

Uchitel agrees, and sees this as one of his main challenges. "To make Tzu-Hsi a person who could be understood - not justified necessarily, but understood," he says.

Another obvious challenge is representing the grandeur of the Forbidden City's imperial court life on a tight budget in Belvoir's tiny downstairs theatre.

Uchitel recounts that one Italian production got to raid the wardrobe from Bernardo Bertolucci's film The Last Emperor. East Coast Theatre's costumes are pared back to convey an "essence" of grandeur.

Even so, Thorne finds the external paraphernalia such as wigs, fans and platform shoes distracting. Most difficult are the elongated fingernail guards.

"Even without wearing all of them, I'm finding it impossible to do things for myself," she says.
Thorne relies on other cast members for help in tasks such as getting dressed. "I could get used to it," she says.

What Thorne does enjoy is the chance to work with seven other Asian-Australian actors, a rare event. Uchitel says that many experienced actors from Asian backgrounds have found the lack of roles in this country too tough to stay in the business, but he was determined to find this cast.
"Especially now in Australia, with a huge Asian population, to do this play with a Caucasian cast would seem kind of odd," he says.

Empress of China embraces a broad sweep of history: the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the decline of an empire. "It does have this epic feel about it, but at the same time it's quite human," Uchitel says.

The director also feels many of the themes are as relevant now as when Tzu-Hsi reigned, such as the West imposing its own values on other cultures, the individual's struggle to maintain control, the corrupting nature of power, and the danger of losing touch
with reality.

Wolff writes in the play's introduction of the Empress: "She had to reach absolute power before she could feel its absolute emptiness."

"I'm always attracted to plays that have big ideas and have a lot at stake," Uchitel says.

"I think TV covers our everyday [life] and that's why I think theatre is great, because you can explore these extreme situations."