Fredric Mao Chun-fai has long championed bringing passion to the stage. With his latest production, he takes that mission literally: Man-Zhang Sheng-Romeo is about matters of the heart. This time, Mao wants to talk about nothing but love.
'Love has manifested itself so successfully as a subject in many a classic theatrical piece - works by William Shakespeare or Richard Wagner, for example, flourished because of the heightened love that formed their cores,' he says.
An admirer of heroic romances, Mao is disappointed with the way love stories are usually viewed - and executed - as populist gestures and discounted by critics and intellectuals.
This sentiment has started him on a crusade to reclaim love from the banal and anaemic, from productions that gave it a bad name.
Tear-jerker epics are not for Mao. He intends to break love down into its various components and delve into each. His cast will present a series of segments representing facets of love, such as jealousy, apprehension and mutual pursuit.
In line with his previous production, The Girl Who Turned The World Upside Down, an experimental take on George Bernard Shaw's Joan Of Arc, Mao intends to get his message across by taking cues from past epics.
The foundations of his play lie in the interplay between characters from Romeo And Juliet and from the ancient Chinese classic Love In The West Chamber (in which Zhang Sheng is the leading male character). By revealing the characters' views on romance and passion, Mao intends to show what love means in different times and places. By setting these characters - and their values - against each other, Mao examines how much modern man and woman resemble their ancestors where love is concerned.
