A Chinese stage adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption premieres in Shenzhen, and Tim Robbins, star of the 1994 movie, sends his congratulations
- ‘Anything is possible as long as you have hope,’ says Zhang Guoli, director of stage version of The Shawshank Redemption, echoing a theme of film it’s based on
- Tim Robbins, who played the lead character in the film, congratulates Zhang on the production, which uses an all-Western cast of actors fluent in Mandarin
A Chinese-language stage adaptation of the 1994 Hollywood film The Shawshank Redemption will premiere in Shenzhen, China, on January 12 with an all- Western cast who speak fluent Mandarin.
Spearheading the unusual production, which involves actors from Australia, Canada, Finland, the United States, Italy, Russia, Argentina and France, is Chinese actor and director Zhang Guoli.
“This has been a very challenging project,” Zhang says. “We drew spiritual strength from the original story, a strength enhanced by our mutual love of the Chinese language. The experience has made me firmly believe that anything is possible as long as you have hope.”
Having an all-Western cast for a story set in the United States makes sense, says the show’s producer, Yao Yi, the general manager of Longma Entertainment, based in Beijing. “Why not? Foreign actors are performing the story from their own culture using Chinese language,” she says.
I speak for many actors and actresses from around the world that performing arts have no boundaries. In this sense we speak the same language
Special efforts were made to ensure the Mandarin dialogue is delivered perfectly, says Australian-born James Clarke, who plays the lead character, Andy Dufresne. The cast were only allowed to talk to each other in Mandarin. Anyone caught speaking English would be fined 20 yuan (US$3) per word.
The Hollywood film was adapted from a novella written by Stephen King called Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
The story concerns Dufresne, a banker who ends up in Shawshank State Penitentiary serving a life sentence after he is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. Conditions in prison are terrible – Dufresne is sexually assaulted by fellow prisoners and abused by guards.
Over two decades, Dufresne secretly digs a tunnel, through which he eventually escapes.
Once he’s out, he blows the whistle anonymously on the corruption and abuse that has been taking place in the prison, collects a secret fund he had helped the corrupt prison warden amass and goes off to live out the rest of his life in Mexico. Through perseverance he has done something that most would think impossible.
Paroled a year later, a prisoner Dufresne befriended, called Red, joins him.
Some members of the cast are well known in China, such as Mark Rowswell, a popular Canadian voice actor known as Da Shan. Rowswell plays Red, who is played by Morgan Freeman in the film.
Rowswell says the universal appeal of The Shawshank Redemption is its message of hope. “The two characters are stuck in an environment with no freedom, no hope, no dignity, and no way out. Yet in fact they do make it out and presumably live happily ever after,” he says.
Clarke, national director of the Australia China Business Council, lived in China for years and his fluent Mandarin has made him a well-known online influencer there. He joined the production at the last minute, when the rest of the cast had already been in rehearsals for around a month.
“I had three days to try and catch up to where the rest of the crew were, which meant reciting my lines until late at night, at airports and on planes. On the flight to Beijing, Mandarin-speaking passengers threw strange looks when they heard me reciting lines such as ‘I didn’t kill my wife, I’m innocent!’,” Clarke says.
Tim Robbins, who plays Dufresne in the movie, wrote to Zhang to congratulate him for adapting the story into a Chinese-language play.
“Although the play in China is going to be in Mandarin, I speak for many actors and actresses from around the world that performing arts have no boundaries. In this sense we speak the same language,” said Robbins in his letter to Zhang.
“The Shawshank Redemption”, Shenzhen Poly Theatre, January 12-14. Subsequent performances in Shanghai and Beijing. For details, visit polytheatresz.polyt.cn
