Chinese version of 'The Price' set to make a grand debut
Play marks second time He Bing will play both director and main actor, Zhang Kun reports.
Directed by renowned theater actor He Bing, the Shanghai leg of The Price will take place from June 20 to 23 at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. The production is the first Chinese version of the renowned play of the same name by Arthur Miller (1915-2005), according to He.
Miller first visited China in 1983 upon the invitation of the Beijing People's Art Theatre and directed the first Chinese production of his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman. The play has since been one of the most frequently presented Western theater works in China.
The Chinese production of The Price premiered at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing in January before going on a national tour.
A theater actor from the Beijing People's Art Theatre, He last performed at the Shanghai Grand Theatre in 2014, when he played the leading role in the Chinese adaptation of Japanese playwright Koki Mitani's play University of Laughs.
The production was a huge success, with the tickets to all eight shows sold out, recalled Zhang Xiaoding, general manager of the Shanghai Grand Theatre, who described the event as "an unprecedented phenomenon at our theater for a Chinese theater production".
He, 55, arrived in Shanghai on May 23 to participate in a public discussion about the upcoming showings of The Price with Li Jianming, a translator and literary critic.
"Chinese audiences are familiar with Arthur Miller and his plays, such as The Crucible and Death of a Salesman, but The Price had never been presented in public on the Chinese mainland," says He, when asked about the motivation behind the creation of the Chinese version of the renowned play.
"I am not so bold as to judge Arthur Miller, but I think his plays are powerful enough to reach beyond time and space," says He, who read The Price last year and believes the theme of guilt and responsibility, as well as the topic of strained relationships between family members, will have strong resonance with today's Chinese audiences.
"It is a dilemma faced by all human beings — do we live for ourselves, or do we live for other people? It's like an alternative version of'to be or not to be'," he adds.
Written in 1967, The Price tells a story about two brothers reuniting, decades after taking separate paths in life, to sell their late father's estate.
In the Chinese production, the big brother, Walter Franz, played by He, is a successful doctor who chooses to live for nobody but himself, while the younger brother, Victor, who is played by Zhou Shuai, lives a humble life with his wife Esther.
"The play starts with a discussion about the estimated price of the old furniture, but as it goes on, the play talks about all the problems one can possibly encounter in his or her lifetime," says He.
"The two brothers realize that there is no perfect choice in life and everybody has to pay the price of their own decisions. We have quite a lot of men like Walter now in China — people who have achieved considerable success in terms of money and fame in this rapidly developing economy, but are they really as fulfilled as they claim to be? What is the dark hole in his heart that draws Walter back to the old house?"
Li points out that while audiences tend to sympathize with Victor, who is the underdog, people should refrain from making moral judgments, and find the "resilience and strength of these broken characters".
"Life is cruel, but at the same time it can also empower people," she says.
The Price is the second production in which He takes on the roles of both director and main actor, with the first being the Chinese production of Le Pere by French author Florian Zeller in 2018.
The original 1968 production of The Price won several theater prizes and has been adapted several times for TV. The latest English production is directed by Conleth Hill and is being shown at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, Ireland.
