Monkey Journey to the WestMonkey Journey to the WestDamon Albarn (music), Chen Shi-Zheng (writer/director), Jamie Hewlett (design)The O2 Monkey is not the best way to encounter any of the artists or traditions it draws from. So you have Damon Albarn’s music, adventurous and interesting, but here incidental and only really matching the onstage action on one or two occasions; Jamie Hewlett’s illustration, which ordinarily I love, blown up to ugly low-res and used to cover long set changes; and then a sort of bastardised version of Chinese opera which ejects the ritualised and dance-like stage combat and replaces it with a bad computer game aesthetic, Monkey pulling off special moves and flying around on wires. The dialogue has the same mismatch of styles: at times it tries to preserve some of the poetry and imagery of the original Chinese legend; but then you have a character warning that he is going to make “hamburger hash” out of his enemies. At times it’s impenetrable enough that it’s hard to follow what’s going on (doubly so because the subtitles were far enough off-stage that you couldn’t read them and watch the action). The first half resembled a jumbled fever dream where Monkey ranged across the Earth and the Heavens, collecting powers and arming himself only to be imprisoned for 500 years by a giant hand of Buddha. The second half was tighter: the set designs were neater and there was a stronger narrative line as Monkey met up with his warrior-companions, Pigsy and Sandy, and escorted the monk Tripitaka on his quest to bring religious scriptures back to China. The animation sequences from the first half more or less disappeared, replaced by a map with a little Monkey symbol and icons for all the characters/scenes to be encountered on the journey. It was crude, and again like a computer game, but it helped the audience follow. Through all this there was very much a kitchen-sink attitude to collecting and exhibiting circus skills: basically every major discipline was represented, if only for twenty seconds (and sometimes a bizarre twenty seconds: the guards of Heaven teetering around on giraffe unicycles trying to manage spears). The cast were Chinese troupe performers, confident and skilled but not doing anything original or showing much of themselves: grumpy contortionist, ensemble acrobats, silk aerialist with a massive oversplit—you really only need to see it once. During the interval everyone spilled out into the O2 lobby area where staff were selling Monkey fans, and on the walls were Jamie Hewlett’s concept sketches for the opera: dark, stylised, extravagantly cool, it showed you how good it might all have been. This review contains the views of the author which are not necessarily shared by the CDA |
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