Jinsha Musical

Wednesday night James and I were privileged to see the musical Jinsha.
It was all in Chinese, but there were scrolling screens on both sides
of the stage, one showing Chinese "subtitles" the other an English
translation. It was on the level with Cats or Phantom in it's
production scale and costuming but the venue was smaller than I would
have expected. It made it very fun to watch. There were fireworks, a
real rain storm from the ceiling, girls on trapeze over the audience,
levitating characters on the stage...a lot of fun to watch. The themes
were pretty common, but it was told in a way that was very Chinese.
Many of the characters were from nature and had balancing roles. There
was also a gauzy projection screen they used during set changes to
show takes from previous performances as this is their 5th cast- that
was very weird as it kind of jolted you out of the world they were
drawing you into. One person apologized as it may have felt like
"propoganda" but we tried to take it in its cultural context.
We had beautiful seats center stage, 4th row and got to meet the
producer and several other people who worked on it after the show.
They were celebrating their 300th performance and are looking for ways
to bring it on tour in the US, Japan, Europe, etc.
James and I both really enjoyed it- the music and the vocals were
awesome. We may have more interesting taste than some, but I showed
Marlo and Zoe a condensed version they gave us on DVD and they were
fascinated. As Marlo said, "It is a really sad story mom."

Here is a link to their page and a synopsis as viewed through babelfish.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=zh_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.tyfo.com%2f10604%2fjinshamusic%2f05musicjs%2fnr_html%2f05js_news_050301_015.shtml

Check it out if you get a chance.