The Golden Dragon: will the production divide audiences? Pic: © Stephen Cummiskey
Roland Schimmelpfennig is one of Germany’s most lauded contemporary playwrights, and The Golden Dragon, translated here by David Tushingham in this ATC/Drum Theatre, Plymouth production one of his biggest hits, winning the author the 2010 Mulheimer Dramatist Award.
Directed by Ramin Gray it’s a curious piece - haunting and riveting one minute; irritating and repetitive the next with menus read out interminably throughout. And one that is sure to divide audiences.
The tale is set around The Golden Dragon Thai/Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant of the title.
Here an excellent multi-tasking ensemble cast of five bring to life the staff and clientele who live above the restaurant, as Schimmelpfennig weaves his tale about migration, exploitation, and journeys, both emotional and personal.
Played out against a simple white paper background with minimal props, with the male members of the cast mostly playing females and vice versa, we’re quickly treated to the characters who make up this modern fable.
So there’s the old man rueing the passing of his youth; two air stewardesses who nonchalantly criss-cross the globe dishing out meals (one ends up sucking on a tooth found in her soup); the ‘man in the stripey shirt’ trying to cope with his wife’s infidelity; and in the cramped kitchen itself the staff whose job it is to dish up the food, all the while trying to solve the problem of the toothache suffered by the young boy not long arrived from China. Not having any papers a dentist is out of the question.
Elsewhere a busy, hard working ant and a beautiful cricket play out an increasingly sinister fable about exploitation and human trafficking that weaves its way into the other stories to brutal effect..
Full of Brechtian tics (“pause”; “long pause” say characters who at times refer to themselves in the third person ) , and owing much in tone and style to Britain’s In-Yer-Face movement, the subject matter is nothing new. And you can’t help feeling Schimmelpfennig takes the long way round here to address it
- The Golden Dragon, Traverse, Edinburgh, until Aug 28. Tel: 0131 228 1404 or visit traverse.co.uk
