Category Archives: The Morgue

Get Ready for Oscar: Short Films Rundown

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Academy Award, Oscar

(photo: David Torcivia, creative commons license)

Yesterday, I saw the AA-nominated short films in the Animation and Live Action categories. Academy rules define a short as any film under an hour, and some were only a few minutes. Overall, they were not the downers this year’s documentaries were (blurbed here). Links take you to the films or at least to trailers, for a taste of the tremendous diversity involved.

I don’t know enough about the animated category to discriminate, and the techniques are vastly different across films. Here are the nominees:

  • Sanjay’s Super Team – a young boy’s fantasy reconciles his love of superheroes and his father’s traditional Hindu gods. Beautifully rendered and quite sweet in its message. (7 minutes, from Pixar and Disney, directed by Sanjay Patel)
  • World of Tomorrow – the most graphically abstract, with what seemed like a lot of interesting points, but so fast-moving I couldn’t absorb them all. Funny in places, but ultimately disturbing. (17 minutes, United States, by Don Hertzfeldt)
  • Bear Story – already the winner of many awards, hyper-detailed graphics portray a bear who has created a complex hurdy-gurdy that shows a story paralleling the creator’s own yearning to regain his family. Richly visual; this one seems the likely winner. (11 minutes, Chile, directed by Gabriel Osorio Vargas)
  • We Can’t Live Without Cosmos – cosmonaut training and close friendship prepare two men for outer space. Then things go wrong. Relatively simple graphics and an interesting story. I liked this one best. (16 minutes, Russia, Konstantin Bronzit)
  • Prologue – parents were advised to remove their children for this one (nudity and violence) Wisely. Beautiful pencil drawing technique showed a battle among four sword-wielding warriors. My lingering question was “why?” (6 minutes, British, directed by Richard Williams)

A few additional animated films were shown in this program in some not-quite-nominated category, my favorite of which was from France: The Short Story of a Fox and a Mouse.

The Live Action shorts covered a wide range, and each had its fans.

  • Ave Maria – what happens when an Israeli family’s car crashes at the door of a nunnery in the rural West Bank, knocking over and decapitating a statue of the VM. The man wants to use the nuns’ phone to call for a ride, but between the nuns’ vow of silence and the Sabbath prohibition against using anything mechanical, everyone is at odds. The man’s mother has lots to say about the whole situation. The only comedy, this was my favorite. (15 minutes, Palestine, France, Germany, directed by Basil Khalil)
  • Shok (“Friend”) – When war breaks out and their town is occupied by Serbian soldiers, two Albanian schoolboys come to understand how fragile society’s veneer of trust really is. This seems the most likely winner, providing the most complete story. (21 minutes, Kosovo, Jamie Donoughue)
  • Everything Will Be Okay – from the title, as you can guess, everything is definitely not OK. A divorced father picks up his daughter for her regular overnight visit with him, but he has something entirely out of the norm planned. The actor playing the daughter steals the show, as she gradually realizes what’s happening. (30 minutes, Germany, Austria, Patrick Vollrath)
  • Stutterer – a young London man with a severe stutter has a six-month online relationship with a woman that goes amazingly well, until she comes to town and proposes they meet in person. Will he go through with it? Very sweet and a sentimental favorite. (12 minutes, UK, Benjamin Cleary)
  • Day One – A new-on-the-job Afghan-American interpreter for the U.S. military is confronted with a series of horrifying events. I thought the story had a whiff of the predictable about it, though all the acting was top-notch. (25 minutes, United States, Henry Hughes)

If you need to kill some time waiting for results in the short features categories, you might play a little Oscars 2016 Bingo, courtesy of Wired and Brian Raftery. I’ll be on the lookout for B3: “Louis Gossett Jr. pretends to understand whatever it is Lady Gaga is doing up there.”

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Run-up to the Oscars: Documentary Short Films

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Ebola workers, Liberia

Ebola Workers in Liberia (photo: WHO in PPE, wikimedia)

Again this year, the Trenton Film Society is presenting the three categories of short films nominated for Academy Awards. Thursday night, I saw the documentary shorts, five films culled from 74 entries. Tomorrow I’ll see the animated shorts and live action (fiction) nominees. Many of the documentary shorts have been well received at film festivals in the United States and worldwide. Here’s a quick rundown (the links include trailers):

  • Body Team 12 – this entry from Liberia, directed by David Darg, shows the work of people whose job was to collect the bodies of Ebola victims at the height of the 2014 outbreak in West Africa. Their work, described by Garmai Sumo, the team’s only female member, was heartbreaking, but essential in attempts to protect the health of family members and the community. (13 minutes)
  • Chau, Beyond the Lines – a joint U.S. and Vietnam production, directed by Courtney Marsh, about a teen growing up in a Vietnamese center that cares for children affected by Agent Orange who wants to become an artist and clothing designer. Marsh follows the profoundly disabled Chau into his 20s, when he receives vocational school certificates, gets a job painting pictures for a design firm and supports himself in his own apartment. Uplifting, but he is undoubtedly an outlier in spirit and success. (34 minutes)
  • A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness – directed by Sharmen Obaid-Chonoy, this film explores the “honor” killings of Pakistani women, which occur at a rate of more than a thousand per year. 18-year-old Saba fell in love and eloped, but her uncle and father found and shot her and threw her body into a river. Miraculously, Saba survived, scarred, and her father and uncle were jailed. Now, if she only “forgives” them, the court will pardon them. Her lawyer and the police don’t want her to do it, but community pressure and the society’s intransigent views about “respect” are powerful. (40 minutes)
  • Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah –this biopic from British filmmaker and journalist Adam Benzine describes French director Lanzmann’s challenges in creating his massive, nine-and-a-half hour 1985 documentary Shoah. This film includes some footage never seen before, as Lanzmann talks about how he went about trying to describe the Holocaust from the inside. That took a toll. (40 minutes)
  • Last Day of Freedom – a remarkable animated documentary from U.S. directors Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman: the story of a man’s agonizing experience when he reports suspicion that his younger brother—who has serious PTSD and bouts of homelessness—has committed a terrible crime. Since there is no film of Manny, the accused brother, animation lets him be represented, as a soldier, walking down the street, and was an interesting and effective choice. (32 minutes)

Chicago Theater Treat

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Sherlock Holmes

Michael Aaron Lindner (as Arthur Conan Doyle) and Nick Sandys (as Sherlock Holmes) contemplating “A Three-Pipe Problem”

Hey there, Chicago-land readers and visitors: For a fun time, see The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes, a lively musical on stage at the Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport Avenue, through March 20. The book is by popular Chicago theater stalwart John Reeger, with music and lyrics by Michael Mahler and the late Julie Shannon. Plot, acting, musical numbers, and singing voices—all super!

The story has two main strands (sorry, Sherlockians!). The first deals with the outraged aftermath when Arthur Conan Doyle published “The Final Problem,” a short story in which Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Professor James Moriarty are said to die in a plunge over Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls. Doyle was sick of Holmes and wanted to write something else, but The Great Detective’s fans were furious.

The second thread, also drawn from real life, covers Doyle’s own efforts at crime-solving in the case of solicitor George Edalji. Edalji was the son of an Indian vicar and Scottish mother, none of whom were well accepted in their small Staffordshire village of Great Wyrley. George was falsely accused of harming a number of horses and served three years’ hard labor before Doyle’s and others’ campaign led to his pardon.

If Edalji’s story sounds familiar, it was explored in the 2005 novel, Arthur and George by British author Julian Barnes (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize), and a UK television series last year. The Mercury theater production differs from the television version in that it brings in Sherlock Holmes himself, channeled by Doyle, and proposes a different solution.

The entire 13-member cast was strong, especially singling out Nick Sandys (Sherlock Holmes), Michael Aaron Lindner (Doyle), McKinley Carter (Louise Doyle), and Christina Hall (Molly Jamison). Sandys and Lindner even physically resemble the characters they play! Having a live five-piece orchestra added immensely to the enjoyment. Energetic and well staged by director Warner Crocker.

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The Sounds of Movie Music

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film

(photo: wikimedia)

Movie soundtracks are meant to enhance and amplify. They’re successful when they’re so much in sync with the film that the viewer internalizes them as part of the experience. Not all scores work, while some may work too well: the modern soundtrack for The Revenant was more likeable than the movie–to me, but not to the Grand Pooh-Bahs of the Golden Globes and  BAFTA !

Without doubt the composer’s contribution “has become an essential part of the medium’s power,” said Matt Patches and Kristopher Tapley for HitFix, and can be as identifiable as any visual image. In just a couple of notes, people will nail the theme from Star Wars, The Godfather (good ring-tone choice there), or Chariots of Fire. I’ve linked a few movie titles below to soundtracks or excerpts that show good melding of sight and sound.

The Academy Awards are coming up February 28, and we’ll be re-hearing five of the best scores from 2015. First, a look back:

  • Ten great soundtracks from film adaptations of books, by Kate Scott at Book Riot includes Brokeback Mountain (with tracks by various folk and bluegrass artists, including Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, and Steve Earle, as well as the work of composer Gustavo Santaolalla); one of my all-time favorite scores, The Last of the Mohicans (music by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman), which I skated to!; and the bittersweet score to The Painted Veil (music by Alexandre Desplat, who’s received eight AA nominations and won for The Grand Budapest Hotel).
  • A previous Kate Scott story featured the scores from Pride & Prejudice (with music by Dario Marianelli and featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet on solo piano) and A Series of Unfortunate Events (music by Thomas Newman), which Scott says are her “two favorite soundtracks of all time.”
  • Patches and Tapley looked back at Oscar winners of the past 80 years and picked the best of the best. Their top three: 3) Schindler’s List (John Williams, AA 1993), which “aches with palpable melancholy; 2) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Howard Shore, AA 2001), “moving, thrilling and chilling”; and #1) Lawrence of Arabia (Maurice Jarre, AA 1962) “an epic musical journey.” And, unforgettable.
  • The American Film Institute list of 25 greatest film scores gives Lawrence of Arabia the third spot, with Gone with the Wind (Max Steiner) second, and Star Wars (John Williams) at the pinnacle. A little lower on the AFI list is a pair of my favorites, The Magnificent Seven (Elmer Bernstein) in eighth place and Chinatown (Jerry Goldsmith) in ninth.
  • None of these retrospective lists include another in my personal luvvit list—1982’s Blade Runner, with music by Vangelis.
  • This year’s AA nominees for best original score are: Bridge of Spies (Thomas Newman); Carol (Carter Burwell); The Hateful Eight (Ennio Morricone); Sicario (Jóhann Jóhannsson); and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (John Williams). In only 20 days, we’ll see who wins!

Do you have a favorite movie score, from days past or present?

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Costa Rica Culture and (Coffee) Cultivation

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Costa Rica’s long cultural history gives life there today its special flavor. Yes, smartphones and satellite dishes are ubiquitous, but they exist alongside healthy remnants of the past. We didn’t see any of the remaining villages of several pre-Columbian tribes that sparsely peopled the landscape that became Costa Rica. However, our Tropical Comfort Tours guide Jose told us a lot about them in the car ride on our “culture day.” When the Spanish came in the 1500s, they were most interested in the mountain-dwelling tribe, the Boruca, who they hoped might have more gold. They brought with them their religion, and the country remains heavily Catholic.

Liberia Church

Immaculate Church of the Conception, Liberia

Liberia Church Altar

Altar decorated for Lenten services

Late one afternoon we took a cab into the provincial capital of Liberia (a 40-minute ride) and observed a jam-packed Ash Wednesday service. The cross-shaped piercings on all sides of the church let the breezes through, and the priest’s vestments billowed dramatically. The altar has been prepared to look like a grotto, with an entombed Christ in the center in preparation for Easter. The photo captures only a small portion, including a man in black still working on the lights. I’ve never seen anything like it!

Costa Rica pot

We were delighted with a demonstration of traditional pottery-making by a young man from Guaitíl. The pots from there are made on a hand-operated wheel and include representations of local plants and animals, as well as symbolic elements that date back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The pot I selected features a bold toucan.

 

A Coffee Quiz

We toured a coffee cooperative that takes beans from many small local farmers and combines them for processing and export. How much do you know about coffee?

  1. coffee roaster

    Coffee Roaster

    The tall coffee plant variety grown in Brazil must be mechanically picked. This is faster and cheaper, but is the quality better, yes or no?

  2. In Costa Rica, an expert coffee bean picker makes about: $10 a day; $20 a day; $40 a day.
  3. When coffee beans are processed, the defective, unripe, partially worm-eaten beans are separated out and: thrown away; used for planting the next crop; sold to the food industry for use in candies, cookies, liqueurs, etc.
  4. Dark roast coffee has more caffeine than light roast. True or False?
  5. Who produces the best coffee: Colombia, Costa Rica, or Hawaii?

Answers: 1. NO! 2. $20 a day. 3. Sold to the food industry. 4. False. 5. All three!

Costa Rica house

Surprisingly, in a country with no military whose people are legendarily congenial and non-confrontational, so many people even in remote areas have outfitted their windows with bars, erected chain-link fences around their property, and not uncommonly topped them with barbed wire. We ate at a seafood restaurant in Liberia (Tierra Mar) surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire.

(All photos by the author.)

Our Costa Rica Hotel? ¡Pura Vida!

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Andaz balcony

Hotel room balcony

Scottsdale cousins arranged accommodations for our recent week-long Costa Rica trip. We were tag-alongs, so in a show of agreeability just went with their choice. At the last minute (24 hours before our flight time), they unfortunately had to cancel. This was not because they’d done a more careful accounting of the hotel costs, which conceivably could induce a cardiac event in the unwary. We stayed with it. The Andaz Peninsula Papagayo Resort where we stayed is a high-end Hyatt brand, and there are a few Andaz’s worldwide. This one was worth every penny.

The 153 rooms have many thoughtful design features. I liked best the balcony with its view through the trees down to the bay. Early in the morning, with the howler monkeys howling, the tropical birds screeching, and a cup of coffee steaming, to sit outside in 75-degree temperatures was heaven.

¡Pura Vida! Is the untranslatable motto of Costa Rica, which suggests enjoying life at the max, and it’s certainly the watchphrase of the Andaz resort staff. When Costa Rica eliminated the military in 1948, those monies were diverted into improving the citizenry’s quality of life. Best health care system in Central America. Best educational system (free to an extent that would warm Bernie Sanders’s heart-cockles), and highest literacy rate. Schooling includes English. If I worked at it, I could find older members of the gardening staff who don’t speak English (Me, with big smile: “Plantas están muy bonita.” Him, with big smile: “Sí” and thinking, “what the heck did she just say?”). My linguistic provincialism is routinely embarrassing.

Andaz lobby

The beautiful welcome lobby’s vaulted ceiling is lined with river reeds and it’s wide open, letting the breezes (during our stay, strong winds) blow through. That’s where you find the knowledgeable and extremely conscientious concierge staff. They set us up with tours to the places we wanted to see and kept us up-to-date as conditions changed. Their goal was to make sure we had a good time, and in that they were beyond successful! The food at the resort’s three restaurants is excellent—even the buffet breakfast. We watched the Super Bowl in Spanish at the tapas bar.

The spa is elegant, and the grounds and infinity pools, also built into a steep hillside, are beautiful.

 

Andaz pool

Infinity pool built into hillside

The hotel has two beaches on the bay, but when we wanted the Pacific Ocean experience, a free shuttle drove us to the beach club. There’s also a gym and golf course availability, which we didn’t use. Don’t let the steep terrain of the Andaz’s 28 acres put you off. A golf cart will come immediately to take you anywhere on the grounds you want to go. We walked up and down the steep paths and by week’s end, it was getting easier.

Beach

We probably would stay closer to the cloud forest on a return trip and save ourselves some long van rides, but as a place for a getaway and a once-in-a-lifetime vacation? Priceless.

Million-dollar bonus: stars at night, by the bushelsful.

(All photos by the author.)

All the Monkeys Aren’t in the Zoo

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White-faced monkey Some of them, like the fellow in the photo at right, just fled the balcony of our Costa Rica hotel room. A week in this Central American paradise is an opportunity to see a huge diversity of wildlife. Only about half the size of the U.S. state of Ohio, Costa Rica has 1/20th of the world’s biodiversity: “nearly 8% of the world’s bird species, 10% of the world’s butterfly species, 10% of the world’s bat species and 20% of the world’s hummingbird species,” according to our highly-recommended guidebook by James Kaiser. In all, a quarter of Costa Rica’s land has been set aside in national parks and preserves to maintain this astonishing homeland for so many creatures.

On our too brief week-long visit, we didn’t have to go outside the hotel grounds to watch both white-throated capuchin monkeys and see (and hear) howler monkeys. Our hotel grounds on Guanacaste province’s Papagayo peninsula also was home to white-nosed coatls (coatimundis), which the locals call raccoons—their familiar relatives both zoologically and behaviorally—two kinds of iguanas, the green and “black,” lizards of various sizes, diverse butterflies, and many birds that I could hear but could not find in the trees. Every morning I watched a hummingbird take a morning sip from the flowering the trees outside our balcony.In the nearby waters we saw flying fish and snorkelers described puffer fish, sea urchins, and bright tropicals.

Jesus Christ LizardA boating excursion on the Tempisque River in Palo Verde National Park gave us the chance to see the so-called Jesus Christ lizard, whose webbed toes allow it to “walk on water” for distances of 10 to 15 feet, very handy when escaping a terrestrial predator. The real reptilian attraction of the river tour is, of course, the crocodiles. Aided by the low tide, we saw them in grinning profusion. The 12-foot beauty pictured at bottom was quietly sunning, seemingly oblivious to the gawking boat passengers. Then she decided to have some fun by rolling into the river and drenching the humans with muddy water.

The river trip was led by our excellent guide Jose from the aptly named “Tropical Comfort Tours” and an eagle-eyed boat captain. They were able to spot for us numerous local animals tourists’ untrained eyes would have overlooked: all three species of night herons, all three species of white egrets, the little blue heron (whose presence signals river health), and many more. En route to the river we saw wood storks, flocks of parakeets, the white-throated magpie-jay, and crested caracara (my spotting).

Crocodile Even though I’d spent a week researching, reading about, and memorizing the look of the country’s various poisonous snakes, did not see one. (Yay!!) High winds caused the authorities to close the mountain and volcano parks that were some distance from our hotel, because of the risk of falling trees and poisonous fumes from a rumblingly active volcano. (Silver lining: the winds kept mosquitoes and other bugs away.) These protected gems contain much of Costa Rica’s biological diversity, including hundreds of orchid species. We have to go back!

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The Assassin

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Shu Qi, the Assassin, China

Shu Qi as The Assassin

This 2015 Chinese martial arts film (trailer) had one showing in Princeton last night—sold out! Thankfully, I caught it. The movie has had mostly positive reviews and garnered a “best direction” award for Hou Hsiao-Hsien at Cannes in 2015. A lot appreciation is due him for the overall beauty of the film.

In 9th century China, a young girl’s family sent her away to a convent for her protection. There she learned the martial arts and becomes a skilled assassin of corrupt local governors, although in one attempt, she instead showed mercy. Disgraced, she’s sent home with a deadly mission: to kill her cousin, the military governor of Weibo province, an assignment that also will test whether she can set her human feelings aside. As children the cousins were promised to each other, but for political reasons, the marriage did not take place.

Exactly why he’s a candidate for murder was somewhat lost on me, because the dialog and subtitles were sparse. Weibo faces other threats as well. Externally, the Emperor has been expanding his dominion, and Weibo is likely his next target; internally, the governor’s wife is playing by her own rules. Suffice it to say there’s plenty of intrigue, and if a few of the motivations are murky, the action is clear.

Shu Qi plays Yinniang, the assassin, and Chang Chen her cousin Lord Tian (Tian Ji’an). Beautiful sets and cinematography, and I wouldn’t mind having the costume budget, either. The soundtrack was spare, but compelling; no surprise that Lim Giong won a soundtrack award at Cannes.

People who appreciate the genre of period martial arts dramas like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers have come to expect exciting (and wholly unrealistic) one-sided battles. The Assassin contains fighting, too, though much less than these previous films. Nor does it depend on wires to the same extent. Yinniang is not just a killing tool; she thinks about what she’s doing and its ramifications. The most interesting and subtle battle was between Yinniang and another female assassin. Their confrontation concludes, and the two women walk away from each other. Only in the next shot do we find out what brought the fight to its decisive end.

Reviewer Alistair Harkness in The Scotsman, criticized Hou, saying he “seemingly has little energy or reverence for the form,” whereas I come down on the side of reviewers who have called the film “mesmerizing.” At its finest, this genre is a melding of cinematic beauty and heart-stopping action. Hou opted to emphasize the former, and that worked for me.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 77%; audiences 53% (a reflection of expectations?).

Going Like Hell Again!

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Ford GT, auto racing, LeMans

(photo: Ford Motor Company)

Caught up in publicity about Ford Motor Company’s return to the prestigious 24-hour LeMans endurance race, only four months away, I’m reproducing my review of the epic battle between Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II (“The Deuce”) below. It’s a terrific read!

Once again, in this year’s race, a Ford GT will represent the company, this time with a lightweight carbon fiber chassis and advanced aerodynamics. Most surprising, it will be running on a V6 EcoBoost engine against the V8s and V12s of its competitors. Ford is confident the V6 EcoBoost can do the job because it has powered Fords to the checkered flag at both the 12-hour Sebring in 2014 and the Rolex 24 at Daytona last year. See how this bright new red-white-and-Ford-Blue competitor evolved from its predecessors.

Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, by A. J. Baime, read by Jones Allen, recounts classic duels of machines and drivers in the French countryside. It includes just enough biography of Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari to understand the motivations of these two rivals, willing to stake their fortunes, their companies’ futures, and (all too often) their drivers’ lives on this grueling competition. The Deuce believed—correctly—that supremacy in the racing circuit would lead to sales of Ford cars. And, when the Ford GTs came in 1-2-3 in 1966, his big gamble paid off. This sweep was followed up with wins in the next three LeMans races.

The components that had to be developed to survive the 24-hour race at Le Mans were testaments to product reliability as well as power, and many advances originally developed for racing vehicles—such as independent suspensions, high-performance tires, disc brakes, and push-button starters—have found their way into passenger cars. (The new 2016 racer already has inspired features built into Ford’s GT Supercar, available this year.)

For Enzo Ferrari, whose interest in consumer cars was always secondary to racing, the point was being the world’s best and proving it in the world’s most prestigious and dangerous sports car race, Le Mans. If you’re at all familiar with auto racing’s “golden age,” the big names are all here in this book: Carroll Shelby, A. J. Foyt, Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Ken Miles, Bruce McLaren, and an upstart kid from Nazareth, Pennsylvania, who took the pole position in the Indianapolis 500 the year I saw the race, Mario Andretti. To get an idea of the speeds they achieve, Baime noted that at top speed they complete the 100-yard distance of a football field in one second.

This was a fast, fun read that shifts between Dearborn, Shelby’s racing car development team working for Ford in Southern California, and Ferrari’s workshop in Maranello, Italy. For a Detroit girl like me, whose grandfather, father, and many uncles worked for the Ford Motor Company, it was a thrill a minute! But even for people who don’t get goosebumps when they hear those Formula One engines roar, Baime’s cinematic recreation of the classic Le Mans races of 1965, 66, and 67, with all their frustrations, excitement, and tragedy is a spectacular true story.

A Dream of Red Pavilions

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Pan Asian Rep, red pavilions, red mansions

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

This iconic 18th-century Chinese novel has been ambitiously brought to life by Jeremy Tiang. Produced by the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, it will play at Manhattan’s tiny Harold Clurman Theatre through February 14. Tiang wisely [!], pared down the novel’s 500 or so characters to fewer than 20, played by 10 actors. Multiple subplots also had to go, though the core story of two young lovers doomed by Jia family trickery remains.

In a 1958 article in The New Yorker, British literary critic Anthony West called The Dream of the Red Chamber (by author Cao Xueqin and, possibly, others) the equivalent of The Brothers Karamazov to Russian culture or Remembrance of Things Past to the French (or so says Wikipedia; the original article is not available online). Scholars who study the novel exclusively even have their own title—“redologists.”

It would be impossible to fully present not just the plot of the novel, but also its many insights into the ways Confucianism, Buddhist teaching, poetic sensibility, ancient myths and symbols, and belief in the spirit world affected everyday life in Qing Dynasty China. More clear to modern audiences is how court politics could disastrously affect even a prominent and wealthy clan such as the Jias.

To suggest some of this richness, the theater’s spare set is augmented by projections onto a large rear screen and two smaller side screens. Chinese music plays at just the right moments, and the costumes are spectacular. If you are familiar with classical Chinese literature (I’ve read the version of this novel called A Dream of Red Mansions; it’s also called Dream of the Red Chamber), you’ll be aware of what lies behind these glancing cultural allusions, though that is not at all necessary to enjoying the play as a semi-mythical, even allegorical work.

Tiang condenses the story about young love and the downfall of the Jia family to a multitude of brief scenes, and directors Tisa Chang and Lu Yu keep the action moving. The fine, mostly young cast members inhabit their roles beautifully, with special appreciation for Kelsey Wang as the doomed lover Lin Daiyu, and Mandarin Wu in several roles, notably the enchanting (and enchanted) dancer Fairy False. Amanda Centano delights as the maids.

While Anita Gates in the New York Times regarded the play as “a pretty curiosity,” I found it a rare treat.