Review: The Orphan of Chao plots an urgent revenge at the Shaw Festival | Canada Voices

• Title: The Orphan of Chao
• Translated and adapted by: Michael Man
• Based on the classical Chinese drama by: Ji Junxiang
• Director: Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster
• Actors: Eponine Lee, Richard Lee, John Ng, Donna Soares, Jonathan Tan and Lindsay Wu
• Company: The Shaw Festival
• Venue: Royal George Theatre
• City: Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
• Year: Runs to Oct. 5, 2024

How does a group of people survive when those in power seem intent on their extermination?

The Orphan of Chao, a fast and furious 50-minute show in the lunchtime slot at the Shaw Festival this season, suggests it takes a handful of individuals of honour outside that group to risk their own safety to start.

But, even then, it might still take a full generation more to make any real headway toward righting wrongs when rulers lose their heads and start cutting off the heads of others.

Though adapted from a Chinese drama penned during the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th century, Michael Man’s play is the most urgent of the dramas to open at the Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., repertory theatre so far this year.

Based on a slice of history from the sixth century BCE, The Orphan of Chao tells of a villainous minister named Tu-An Ku and his plot to kill a rival virtuous minister name Chao Tun.

After a hired assassin has a change of heart and takes his own life, and then a man who Chao once gave food to when he was starving saves the minister’s life again, Tu-An Ku ramps up his attack on Chao by striving to eliminate not just him but all in his bloodline.

His evil quest takes on biblical proportions after a baby Chao is born in prison – and then smuggled out by a kind doctor. This leads to a decree that all babies in the area must be killed if he is not found.

It’s not much of a spoiler alert to say that the orphan survives somehow – and, as played by Eponine Lee, vibrating with a youthful sense of resistance and righteousness, comes of age in an ending that is hopeful but far from triumphant.

Director Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster’s vivid, political production features then-and-now sets (by Jareth Li) and costumes (by Christine Ting-Huan Urquhart) that bridge classical Chinese performance traditions – gongs, martial arts, dance – with contemporary theatre techniques.

She and her design team use these anachronistic visuals to help audiences connect the dots between the struggle to keep the Chao clan alive and contemporary struggles, such as (but not limited to) the one to keep democracy alive in Hong Kong.

This resonates most strongly in a scene where the cast dons gas masks and waves white banners without words – a reference to the empty signs held up by demonstrators in Hong Kong after a law was passed in Beijing deeming pro-democracy messages seditious. (Russians and mainland Chinese protesters have borrowed a blank page from them since.)

The Orphan of Chao, the only surviving play by Ji Junxiang, was the first Chinese play to be translated into a European language about 300 years ago – and it has gone in and out of vogue in the West ever since.

A version adapted by James Fenton premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2012, kicking off a flurry of new interest in the five-act play in a Chinese genre known as zaju, which includes poetry and songs – and a lively debate over how to conscientiously cast works from outside of the Western canon at a repertory theatre company.

The Shaw Festival has solved the representational issue by programming two adaptations of Chinese classics this season – the other, Snow in Midsummer, opens in August – both starring long-time Asian-Canadian ensemble members alongside some new-to-the-festival faces.

Man’s version of The Orphan of Chao is written in a presentational style – with the actors narrating the play as they slip in and out of character.

While it can sound like the Coles Notes of a classic at times, the six actors in the cast – Eponine Lee, Richard Lee, John Ng, Donna Soares, Jonathan Tan and Lindsay Wu – bring a succession of self-sacrificing elders and child-killers to life in short, sharp strokes.

Niagara-on-the-Lake, the quaint colonial town teeming with tourists filling shops selling English, Scottish and Irish goods, may seem on the surface a million miles away from the subject matter.

But a significant number of the hotels in the area are owned by the family of Jimmy Lai, the imprisoned Hong Kong media mogul and democracy activist who is back in court right now trying to get his conviction for taking part in an “unlawful” protest in August, 2019, overturned.

That statue of Bernard Shaw that sits in a fountain on the main drag? It was commissioned by Lai’s twin sister Si Wai Lai.

The Orphan of Chao is not only relevant here – it hits closer to home than any other show in the current Shaw season.