The novelist Wang Anyi's work, "Chang Hen Ge" (translated as "Elegy of Eternal Regrets), often dubbed the best work to epitomize the old days of the city, opens at the Shanghai Drama Arts Center next week.
The work arrives on the stage after undergoing a strenuous adaptation by playwright Zhao Yaoming.
The play centers around the character of Wang Qiyao who first appears in the early 1940s as a high school girl who wins the title, "Miss Shanghai", in a beauty pageant.
But her beauty proves to be a mixed blessing because she is reduced to being the mistress of a high-ranking Kuomintang official who dies in 1949.
Though she falls into penury, Wang Qiyao has love affairs with six men and tries, as best she can, to maintain a privileged lifestyle. Her life ends suddenly in the 1980s following her freakish love affair with a young man.
Earlier, the choice of actors to play the characters in the production was a subject of heated discussion among theatregoers.
Li Shengying, the producer, cast Zhang Lu, a graduate of the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2000, to play the heroine Wang.
However, many theatre-lovers, experts and critics argued that Zhang could not play a character so far removed from her age. However, after seeing the last rehearsal, some have changed their minds.
Wang Anyi, who originally thought Zhang was too young to be suitable for the part of the heroine, now thinks Zhang has done a good job under the guidance of noted female director Su Leci, as Zhang is able to reveal the typical traits of a middle-class girl of Shanghai's bygone days.
Su Leci said: "Zhang Lu is a very talented and hard-working actress. Moreover, the senior artists of the cast and crew, such as Zhu Yin and Fu Chong, have spared no efforts to teach Zhang and other young actors how to act in the play step-by-step."
Some critics believe the play remains true to the eponymous novel of Wang Anyi. The playwright Zhao Yaomin and the novelist share a similar writing style.
Zhao said jokingly: "I tried my best to adhere to the tone and manner of Wang's novel, otherwise Wang would be hostile to me. After all, she is a good friend, and I cannot afford it."
The producer Li hopes that after staging the Mandarin version of the play - and obtaining a warm response from the audience - the center will be able to put on a Shanghai dialect version of the work.
7:15pm, April 10-23
Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center
288 Anfu Lu
Tel: 6473-0123, 6473-4567
100-150 yuan, 800 yuan (VIP, four seats)
(Shanghai Star April 4, 2003)
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