Forget Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, or Indiana Jones. As far as director Chen Shi-Zheng is concerned, the greatest adventurer of them all is Tripitaka, a monk who journeys from China to India in search of Buddha’s Great Scriptures. He is accompanied on his picaresque adventures by Pigsy, the Dragon Prince, and, more mischievously, the Monkey King, who keeps getting the group in and out of trouble. Audiences will be able to judge whether or not this is the greatest story ever told when “Monkey: Journey to the West,” Chen’s unique hybrid of opera and circus arts, opens the Lincoln Center Festival on July 6. The 100-minute spectacle, with music by Damon Albarn (lead singer of Blur) and design by Jamie Hewitt, is based on the 16th-century novel by Wu Cheng’en and features a cast of dozens of singers, acrobats, contortionists, dancers, and martial artists.
“I have loved this book since I was a child,” said the Chinese-born director, best known in the United States for having directed the epic, 19-hour “Peony Pavilion” for the Lincoln Center Festival in 1999. (It returned last year in a two-hour version.) “Unlike other stories of heroes on a quest, ‘Monkey’ is a story of enlightenment. This is not about concrete achievement but the ability to articulate one’s soul.”
Despite the spiritual goal of this eccentric band of travelers, the show itself is full of profane, even racy, incident — Pigsy has a lust for food, women, and wine — and there are battles galore, including ones against the Spider Woman and the Skeleton Demon. Chen says that the cartoon elements in the story led to the choice of Albarn and Hewitt, famous for their virtual band Gorillaz, launched in 2001. The pulsing beat of electronica and a kaleidoscopic design that incorporated both the classic dignity of a giant Buddha and elements of Japanese anime seemed right for the production, which premiered in Manchester, England in 2007. The production, performed in Mandarin with English subtitles, has since played the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, Spoleto USA, and the Royal Opera House in London.
“What the show represents is the clash of traditional Asian culture and modernity, what China is now, and that’s what makes the production so interesting,” said Chen. “Curiously, what Damon and Jamie were able to bring to the production is quite close to the original book in spirit. It is both full of nonsense and very serious situations. ”