You need to concentrate to keep up with Rhinoceros in Love - stage-side translations need to be read fast before they disappear.
A rhinoceros keeper's unrequited love is the basis for an superbly acted play This rich 1999 experimental classic from China is stylish, hip, humorous, streetwise - and hopelessly romantic: under youth's swagger are youth's desperate illusions.
With jumbled dream logic and arresting tableaux, the piece riffs on unrequited, obsessive love, using as illustration hapless rhinoceros keeper Ma Lu who pines for his neighbour
Mingming. Mingming trifles with Ma Lu's affections, but she suffers a similar love-sickness; her dismissive off-stage lover treats her badly but she's too in love to leave. A loves B who loves C ...
Game shows, melodramatic soap operas and insipid pop are touchstones in Liao Yimei's lyrical script; but love is the subject that refuses to go away. It keeps puncturing through conversations about jobs and jackals, and sales pitches for toothbrushes. Apparently the toothbrushes increase libido: "Let us fly high and free in the sky of hygiene!"
The stage-side translations need to be read fast before they disappear. Ma Lu attends a "love training course", and his friends want him to forget Mingming and go out with a wannabe pop star (her parody of "sexiness" is hilarious; and all the acting - facing the audience - is charismatic and excellent).
