And very agitated about … something else. The ensemble of 14 is very upset about … something. The more conventional dancing (choreographed by Akram Khan) does a better job of expressing at least generic angst. Nor can these movements, in themselves, create narrative - as the Cirque team discovered when trying to make acrobatics tell stories in hybrid musical disasters like “Paramour.” So while there is some excitement here, especially in fights that involve clanging sticks and blades, it is the excitement of mere exertion, detached from story value or emotional engagement. Because the performers cannot connect with their opponents while executing their elaborate kicks and hand chops, the visceral thrill of whoosh and thwack is missing, replaced mostly by compensatory grunts and obvious inches of empty air. Rylander, includes strobe effects that could induce a stroke in someone who has already died of a stroke.īy default, it seems that the engine of “Dragon Spring” is meant to be its martial arts exhibitions, staged by Zhang Jun, but they too are a problem. The mostly purple and green lighting, however, by Tobias G. None of this will raise the heartbeat of anyone who’s seen a Cirque du Soleil show. There’s also a pretty moment when Little Lotus somehow gets hooked up like a hose to become a fountain, flooding (or rather empuddling) the stage. (The set is by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams.) Fire is involved, as is a modest amount of aerialism. Seats for 1,200 patrons are arranged on three sides of a playing space crowned by panels of sheer fabric wafting above the action like jellyfish. These mindless stabs at narrative make a bizarre basis for what is evidently meant to be cutting-edge stagecraft. Chen’s direction stretches the evening to nearly two hours - it will fall to those light bulbs, now young adults, to restore peace through joint parricide and quasi-incest.
We do not know what anyone’s beef is with anyone else, or why (for instance) when Little Lotus (PeiJu Chien-Pott) and Doug Pince (David Torok) marry, they give birth to a pair of twin light bulbs. Nor are the six named characters characterized beyond good and evil. Montana Levi Blanco’s chic but interchangeable costumes, all torn black undergear with futuristic cuts, make the ensemble look like an intergalactic touring company of “Chicago.”
If only! But actually no such clarity as to the differing values or territories of the two gangs exists. Lone Peak (David Patrick Kelly) is the old grandmaster of the House of Dragon when Little Lotus, his daughter, takes up with Doug Pince, representing a breakaway sect, it’s “Queens Side Story.” Naturally, they are engaged in a multigenerational rumble with other kung fu fighters.
I’m not sure that a bulldozer could further the plot, which basically involves a secret clan of kung fu fighters in - who knew? - that hotbed neighborhood of Flushing. In any case, none of it furthers the plot. (These wisps of tune, wanly sung and with lyrics that sound mistranslated from Klingon, are credited to the pop musician Sia and others.) Most of the show’s music is disembodied and ambient, whether live or prerecorded I could not tell. But to the extent kung fu usually provides thrills, and musicals usually tell stories through song, the new genre is a misnomer if not an outright lie.įor one thing, there are only (by my count) three songs, by which I mean words sung by characters in a story. I can report that what the director Chen Shi-Zheng and the “Kung Fu Panda” writing team of Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger have come up with does involve martial arts and tonal sounds. The show’s mismatched creators - apparently assembled by random spins of a Rolodex - call the result a kung fu musical. But the McCourt might as well be a Lululemon as long as it’s housing “Dragon Spring”: a product involving acres of spandex and designed to be internationally inoffensive. “Here” was the McCourt, the spectacular if poorly ventilated new performance space created when the Shed’s 120-foot-tall puckered carapace is rolled eastward from the main building to cover some of the few square feet of Hudson Yards not colonized by commerce. I mean beyond those I scrawled in my notebook during “Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise,” which opened at the Shed on Thursday: experiences like “Huh?” and feelings like “Get me out of here.” What were the authors trying to accomplish? What experience did they mean to impart, what feelings did they hope to arouse? Usually when I see an awful show I try to understand what happened.
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