#27: Monkey see
Huang Ruo's 'The Monkey King' at San Francisco Opera.
I won’t beat around the bush: ‘The Monkey King,’ Huang Ruo’s new epic opera, is the best production I’ve seen all year. (As for the music, more on that later.)
This tale of a monkey’s quest for immortality, adapted from the Ming dynasty novel ‘Journey to the West,’ comes alive almost exclusively through practical effects in the SF Opera world premiere production, which cost $10 million. The money seems well spent. With director Diane Paulus at the helm, it’s all visually stunning – often in a way that belies the analog nature of the tools on hand.
Take the boulder that grows throughout the first scene before cleaving to birth, like a Tamagotchi, the Monkey King (tenor Kang Wang, here in a strong SFO debut). It takes only a couple of clever lighting spots and a subtle shift in perspective – black-clad aides gradually push the rock upstage – but it looks so real.
In another scene, Monkey shows off his shape-shifting abilities in a sequence (aped from his teacher, who’s later revealed as the Buddha) called the 72 Transformations. The handful of Monkey copies that spring out are identically dressed extras – nothing fancy. Yet in performance they’re so arresting, you forget that this effect could have been achieved hundreds of years ago.
Best of all are the puppets – draped horses in rippling white, forlorn jellyfish, and a lifelike monkey who, along with dance double Huiwang Zhang, put an extra spring in this king’s step. (Basil Twist directed.)
Monkey’s hijinks bring him to Heaven, whose clouds are inflatable monstrosities – picture your least favorite neighbor’s front yard come December – and tinged with the green of envy. The corrupt gods here live for gaudy couture; it’s as if the Transformers were trying to upstage a wedding. (Someone’s title is “The Fabulous.”) The scale is Wagnerian, but this version of Valhalla is funnier, brisker.
Eventually, the Monkey King goes so far as to try to best the Buddha. Trying to evade the Teacher’s grip, he leaps over peaks that rise in an alien landscape – could this be the Land of Bliss? For the first time Monkey is uncertain, awestruck by the change in scenery and the one coming over him (even as he marks this new territory – “Monkey King was here” – in tag and in urine). But those peaks are five; it turns out Monkey is still in Buddha’s palm. With a marvelous roar from the orchestra, the delinquent is dropped into his prison of 500 years, where we had met him at the top of the opera.
At the eleventh hour Monkey surrenders, and all is well. More spiritually profound to me, though, is the delightful undersea scene in Act I, a PLUR fever dream of otherworldly underwater creatures.1 The music’s great, too – the armory sequence, with its clipped phrases and propulsive beat; the unseen choir, hypnotic in undulating vowels.
I realize that I only now mentioned the score. Granted, it’s hard to imagine the piece of music that would stand up to such outrageous visuals. It’s also true that the orchestra noodles almost constantly and to somewhat static effect (although the execution was excellent under conductor Carolyn Kuan).
The text-setting, too, could use some work. (David Henry Hwang, of Osvaldo Golijov’s ‘Ainadamar’ and Bright Sheng’s ‘Dream of the Red Chamber,’ wrote the libretto.) Characteristic leaps for Monkey sometimes land unstressed syllables on low pitches; it’s often difficult to hear the notes, let alone understand the words. Musically, the other characters blur.
Still, the music has its moments – the chorus’s rhythmic ridiculing of Monkey in the second scene, and later, the wordless battle cries of Heaven’s Lord Erlang (former Adler Fellow Joo Won Jang) and Monkey, who twirls all the while a several-ton pillar as if it were a pretty baton.
Indeed, it’s difficult to separate the appeal of the Monkey’s music from the appeal of Wang, himself. On Tuesday, November 25, he was lissome and, wearing a shit-eating grin, just enough apish for you still to care. (Would it be so hard for someone to bring this guy a banana?) In the story, Monkey meets only skeptics: You, a monkey, immortal? In the stands, it was impossible not to believe. ▣
More Monkey:
S.F. Opera’s ‘The Monkey King’ delivers a brilliant fusion of East, West and wow (Joshua Kosman for SF Chronicle)
In World Premiere, ‘The Monkey King’ Is a Dazzling Triumph at SF Opera (Gabe Meline for KQED)
A Shape-Shifting Hero for a ‘Third Culture’ Opera (Thomas May for NYT)
A Chinese Classic Comes to Spectacular Operatic Life (Joshua Barone for NYT)
Some of my recent writing:
Alexandre Kantorow’s S.F. Symphony debut brings audiences to tears
At S.F. Opera, familiar Beethoven meets de Falla’s unexpected spark
Jun Märkl and S.F. Symphony deliver Ravel’s ‘Daphnis et Chloé’ in full color
S.F. Symphony revives Gershwin and Ellington with exuberance
