2006-02-26





cuca: The Lover

Harold Pinter, the absurdist British playwright who received the Nobel Prize for Literature last October, is a familiar name to Chinese theatergoers. In fact, his works have been imported to Chinese stages since the early 1990s, while just this week, our reporter Wu Jia watched one of his classic plays, Lover. At the mini-theater of the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. We take a look at the return of one of Pinter’s many clever classics to China.
 
Reporter: “Lover” went on show this year just before Valentines Day, presumably based on the belief that there’s something of the absurdist in every romantic. Still in his twenties, the director of the play, Xu Ang, is the youngest director in the history of the Beijing People’s Art Theater. Nonetheless, this is the second time Xu has directed this Pinter-penned play, while he compares this new attempt to the original 1960s version.

“We’ve strictly followed the original work of Pinter and not altered a single word. Equally, we have not many any alterations to the storyline. As for the characters in the play, we act them out according to our understanding of the original play. Therefore, the reason we use a realistic style in our performance is to help the audience better understand this play. Just because a play is absurdist does not mean that the audience is allowed to only partly understand it.”