Snow In Midsummer At The Shaw Festival
The programme for Snow In Midsummer by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, now showing at the Shaw Festival’s Studio Theatre, tells me that the play is “based on the classical Chinese drama The Injustice to Dou E that Moved Heaven and Earth by Guan Hanqing.”
The distinguished scholar and critic Christopher Hoile begs to differ. If you would like a lengthy and learned disquisition on the ancient (13th century) provenance of Snow in Midsummer, I refer you to Mr. Hoile.
Here you will get the observations of your average theatre-going gweilo on Snow in Midsummer as a contemporary work of theatre.
Snow in Midsummer boasts a plot every bit as complex as that of this season’s Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Human Heart, although one with a lot more internal coherence.
Set in the recent present in New Harmony, a gritty factory town in a dusty backwater of Communist China, the story concerns two gay men with the improbable names of Handsome (Michael Man) and Rocket (Jonathan Tan). When Handsome’s policeman father (John Ng) discovers his son is gay he flies into a rage and demands that his son impregnate Dou Yi (Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster), a peasant woman he has just arrested, and so provide him with an heir.
When Handsome demurs, the father commences to rape her himself. The son shoots his father to prevent the rape and the father’s housekeeper frames Dou Yi for the murder to protect the son. Dou Yi is executed and her body harvested for organs. Her heart saves the life of Rocket.
Cowhig uses a flashback to reveal much of this, giving Snow in Midsummer a patina of mystery. The main action of Snow in Midsummer recounts how the spirit of Dou Yi, thirsting for revenge, casts a hideous curse on New Harmony, that will only be lifted when she is exonerated.
Under the direction of Nina Lee Aquino, a very good cast drawn from Shaw’s considerable East Asian cohort gives a straightforward but uninspiring reading of the script. An exception is Ng, who is truly chilling as both the father and as a corrupt and lascivious judge. Lancaster also provides some powerful moments.
In defense of cast and director, Cowhig’s script doesn’t provide a great deal of help. Like much of the work being created by academic playwrights these days, I found it rather pro forma, good enough to get high marks in a playwrighting class, but oddly uninvolving.
Aquino has given Snow in Midsummer an atmospheric production, aided by the lighting of Michelle Ramsay, costumes by Joanna Yu, and John Gzowski’s music.
The minimalist set (little more is possible in the Studio’s intimate confines) is by Camellia Koo, whom I assume is also responsible for the evocative snow and leaves that periodically shower the stage.
Snow in Midsummer is a ghost story after all and Peter Fernandes is named as the creator of “magic and illusions.” These moments are brief but quite wonderful.
Snow in Midsummer continues at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre through October 5, 2024. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Shaw Festival website.
[image: Shaw Festival]
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