Almost uniquely in my Edinburgh
International Festival experience, programme notes for Wu Hsing-Kuo’s
performance have been written by Wu himself. He recounts a prediction
that “the audience will be divided into those who love it and those who
do not understand it”, as if only ignorance could explain a less than
rapturous response. It’s the classic “emperor’s new clothes” argument.
The programme also credits Wu as “Artistic director [of the
Contemporary Legend Theatre company from Taiwan], script, director,
actor”. In the course of the piece he portrays Gregor Samsa, the
protagonist of Franz Kafka’s short story of which this is nominally an
adaptation, his sister, his father, an orphaned baby (from the story
“Before The Law” in Kafka’s
The Trial),
Kafka himself and Wu himself. This is, in short, a work of staggering
narcissism… literally staggering, as Wu uncertainly negotiates his way
up and down the ice mountain of Lin Keh-hua’s set, representing “the
soul’s habitat”. As he makes himself up painstakingly as Gregor’s
sister (or as a more generalised female figure), his transparently
false modesty makes Lindsay Kemp look like J.D. Salinger.
The overall theme of this year’s Festival is the relationship between
art and technology. In this case, it manifests in the contrast between
Wu’s more traditional Peking Opera-style performances and costumes and
a succession of video projections by Ethan Wang, some abstract, others
expressionistic, still others naturalistic as when Wu, playing himself
onstage, berates Samsa (represented at this point by an empty bug
costume) whilst egged on by a video Kafka (also Wu). This all may
symbolise a general relationship between techniques which differ across
the ages, or between those ages themselves, or between differing
artistic impulses… but ultimately, it all boils down to the only
relationship which matters to Wu: that between him and himself. Even
our admiration (for admiration, remember, is the only knowledgeable
response conceivable) is ultimately the fabrication of Wu. The
advertised 90 minutes of this (without interval) would have been trying
enough; an actual running time of over two hours does not represent
added value, to put it mildly. Wu’s programme notes proclaim that “This
production is emphatically personal”; I would agree entirely, if
“emphatically” were replaced by “dully” and “personal” by
“solipsistic”. Oh, Mr Wu!
Written for the Financial
Times.