Fact or fiction?: Siu Hun Li (Fake Mao), Stephen Hoo (Fake Mao) and Rebecca Boey (Fake Mao). Photo: Nobby Clark
Theatre: Arcola Theatre
Play: The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie
Playwright: Anders Lustgarten
Director: Steven Atkinson
Review by Arani Yogadeva
This epic tale, tracing the formation of modern China through the stages of revolution, has urgent relevance to the world now.
Anders Lustgarten is a political playwright in the truest sense, taking global subjects – such as immigration in his acclaimed 2015 play Lampedusa – and using the prism of drama to interrogate our views.
Having spent several years pursuing a PhD on China’s language and politics, including living there, his latest play for the Arcola Theatre is an uneven distillation of his research, understandable considering the breadth of historical ground being covered.
The play is set in a fictional Chinese peasant village called Rotten Peach, with the real-life backdrop of Chairman Mao’s Communist Party and the propagating seeds of revolution. Empowered by two of the party’s work team representatives, Leader Xu (Andrew Leung) and Deputy Tang (a terrific performance by Louise Mai Newberry), the peasants unseat their corrupt landlord to farm their own land.
There is an epic sense to the scenes which spin through the challenges presented by the over-farming of the land, the consequences of mistaken information that melting down tools will boost national steel production and fabricating grain quotas to meet unrealistic party targets and tackle famine.
Lustgarten skilfully reduces a reliance on exposition, saving us from a dull history lesson. His earthy and humorously foul-mouthed characters are anything but obvious ciphers: a welcomed shattering of the faux looking-glass mystique through which the West has traditionally viewed China.
In a pivotal scene, Chairman Mao visits the now starving Rotten Peach. Xu encourages collusion from the peasants to reassure Mao that all is well and grain is plentiful. Tang, by now disenchanted with the party’s methods and aims, attempts to skew the pretence by flagging up the starvation death toll to Mao, only to be met with weary resistance from the peasants.
As soon as Mao leaves for the next village, Xu and his lackey hurriedly transport the same grain supplies there in an effort to maintain the illusion. It’s a set up which rather owes something to Bertolt Brecht, although Brecht himself was influenced by Chinese theatre.
We then fast forwards to the China of 2016: now a gaudy neon cocktail of new wave capitalism and brooding totalitarianism. It’s a seismic tonal shift, creating a play of two very distinct halves. The humour is increasingly quick-fire with the audience directly addressed.
A brilliantly surreal scene stages a three-way Mao impersonation competition, which is hilarious and indicative of Steven Atkinson’s bold and lucid direction. One of the impersonators quotes an obscure speech by the real-life Mao, coining the “sugar coated bullets” of the play’s title: a metaphoric rallying cry against the party’s communist aims being undermined by bourgeois leanings.
Unfortunately, the play loses focus when the action spills out of Rotten Peach village into new locations, such as a sweatshop factory and a burger joint. With this shift comes a raft of new characters, defined in broad brushstrokes.
Lily Arnold’s canny double tier set design echoes the play’s ambition, and the cast give their all as they play multiple roles. And while there is a knowingness in Lustgarten’s script – a character admits their words are a “bit on the nose, yeah. Not sure direct politics works on stage.” – this doesn’t excuse clunky declarations such as – “Did we fail the revolution or did the revolution fail us?” Also a lesbian subplot between two of the main characters comes out of nowhere in the play’s closing moments.
In the introduction to the playtext Lustgarten writes: “This one means a lot to me,” which is clear throughout the play. It’s just a shame that by offering satirical observations rather than a dramatic interrogation of modern day China he misses an opportunity to encourage us to reflect on past mistakes to prevent history repeating itself.
The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie is at the Arcola Theatre until 30 April 2016 before opening the 10th annual HighTide Festival in Aldeburgh, Suffolk from 8 to 18 September 2016.