film & Score reviews
‹‹ Back to film & score reviews
Monkey: Journey to the West
venue: at a marquee outside the O2
what we think: feast for the eyes, less for the ears
by natasha stokes
Isn't the Orient mysterious, compelling and so totally awesome? The latest manifestation of Western obsession with all things yellow is the super-hyped circus-cum-opera, Monkey: Journey to the West, a retelling of the Tang Dynasty legend about the Monkey King, scored by Damon Albarn, no less.
Directed by acclaimed Chinese theater director Chen Shi-zheng and performed in Mandarin, Monkey: Journey to the West is vividly modernized in animations by Albarn's Gorillaz buddy Jamie Hewllet. His stylish, quirky drawings of landscapes and characters add a playful eccentricity to the show, gelling perfectly with the contortionists, balancers and acrobats playing roles like shrimps juggling parasols with their feet and spider women doing 360s on silk suspended from the ceiling.
The plot itself is simple – Monkey travels with a monk, a friar and a pig on a pilgrimage to attain immortality – but its execution obfuscating: there isn't much dialogue and often when there is, it's in the form of Buddhist koans solemnly proclaiming things like “non-emptiness is verily emptiness”. It didn't help either, that for non-Mandarin speakers, surtitles are far to the side of the stage (why not on top?) and glitched out more than once.
You can almost forgive it though, for the sheer wit and charm of the costumes and set design (also by Hewlet), alive in bright greens, reds and yellows; Monkey's outfit in particular is a humorous mesh of the East/West the show is aiming for – a yellow tracksuit which he pimps out with magical armor and cloud-walking shoes as the tale rolls on.
A huge draw for many was Albarn's electronica-pop-classical score (no, I never imagined putting those words together either), composed for an orchestra of pipa, guzheng and zhongran along with traditional Western instruments. Parts of it even borrow from saccharine Canto-pop melodies. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it sounds like the theme to musty Chinese dramas of yore.
Considering Albarn's musical pedigree though, it all falls a little flat. As an accompaniment to the action on-stage, the score works fine, which is to say, it doesn't upstage the action. But when you're the guy who's reinvented himself from Brit-popper to electro pioneer to Chinese opera composer, you'd think the music could, would, should once in awhile knock the action senseless, hog the spotlight and take credit for any roses, bouquets or symbols of adoration that might hence be tossed on stage.
That said, the bulk of the audience was there to marvel at the martial arts and acrobatics, and rightly so, with wire-assisted kung fu making for breathtaking fight scenes, and incredible feats of balance and contortion taking place on ground and in the air. Monkey may not sound or play as great as it looks, but it's a radical homage to a cornerstone of Chinese culture.
