Reviews

Full of satire and absurdity, the play faithfully represents the real dilemmas of modern urban men and women.

 Lin Huo-wang, professor, National Taiwan University

Stan Lai's transcendence lies in his ability to delight in the gossip and common emotions of everyday people, while also representing sadness through unexpected comedic turns.

  Beijing Morning Post

Underneath the hilarity, what Lai wants to convey to the audience are eternal themes of "love” and “freedom.”

Wuhan Evening News

Like other Lai classics, this play is a combination of comedy, drama, farce and melodrama, seamlessly blended into one. It makes you laugh at the ugliness of human nature while lamenting the loss of innocence; it shows us a failed family and a chaotic society without entirely blocking the path of hope.

Raymond Zhou, writer and critic

Ménage à 13 starts from a story that seems like a love triangle, making the audience laugh first and then, in sorrow, reflect on how to identify themselves and to love others.

 Zhu Guang, Shanghai Xinmin Evening News

Ménage à 13 is a modern fable about people's ability (or should I say inability) to love. We all want to be loved and to offer love, but at the same time feel the lack of love in our complex social roles.

Guangzhou Daily

About Ménage à 13

We might call Stan Lai’s Ménage à 13 an "absurdist screwball comedy." But to put any Stan Lai play into a category is dangerous. Lai has said, "It‘s really not that hard to make people laugh, but to make people laugh meaningfully is not that easy." To him it is the same as moving people to tears. In a Stan Lai play, there is never any absolute tragedy or comedy, only complex layers where the two bite at each other, fighting toward the final, unique vision of this playwright-director.

A 13-angled relationship starts from a triangle: famous radio personality Flora (Xie Na) finds that her husband Sixwood (Wen Zhang) is having an affair with a high-powered financial lady Miss Leaf (Feng Li). Starting from this point, the characters start changing identities. This, plus the various real or imagined intimate relationships of daughter Angel (Ma Jingwen) and Grandpa (Liu Yilin), pushes the triangle swiftly into 13 angles, into a farce that satirizes contemporary marriage, power relationships, family relationships, the purpose of life, the possibilities of love, reality and illusion, and how distorted this thing called love has become in this day and age. Here Stan Lai pays homage to Molière, Dario Fo and the works of Woody Allen, bringing Chinese comedy to a new direction, a platform that transcends the absurdities and regrets of real life.

Ménage à 13 is performed by two of China's top comic actors, Xie Na and Wen Zhang, with the other actors coming from Theatre Above in Shanghai, a theatre dedicated to the works of Stan Lai. Through the intricate comic rhythms created by the ensemble comes a work that makes audiences laugh first and think later while the 13 layers of the relationship gradually emerge. The playful scenic design was done by Lai himself, creating a purposely deconstructive style of scene change that fits the general sense of displacement and absurdity. The costumes are by Huang Wei, also called the "Godmother of Fashion," who has created costumes that are as comic as they are easy for quick changes.

Ménage à 13 is now available in Vol. 1 of Selected Plays of Stan Lai  (edited by Lissa Tyler Renaud), in Lai's own English translations, from the University of Michigan Press.

Credits

Written, Directed, and Designed by Stan Lai

Cast:

Xie Na as Flora and Cleaning Lady

Wen Zhang as Sixwood and Air Con Man

Feng Li as Miss Leaf and Social Worker

Ma Jingwen as Angel

Liu Yilin as Grandpa

Costume Design: Huang Wei

Lighting Design: Zeng Tianxiao

Producer: Nai-chu Ding

Production: Theatre Above

English Subtitles Editor: Lissa Tyler Renaud

About Stan Lai

Stan Lai is considered "the best Chinese language playwright and director in the world" (BBC), "Asia's top theatre director" (Asiaweek), and "Asia's flagship playwright" (China Daily). Since 1984, Lai's plays have greatly influenced theatre in the Chinese-language world, including those regarded as masterpieces of the modern Chinese-language theatre such as That Evening, We Performed Crosstalk, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, The Village and A Dream Like A Dream, called by China Daily "possibly the greatest Chinese-language play since time immemorial."

Lai's publications include his influential Stan Lai on Creativity, 28 plays (in Chinese), and a 3-volume, 12-play collection Selected Plays of Stan Lai  (edited by Lissa Tyler Renaud), which has been published in his own English translations by the University of Michigan Press (2022).

Among other awards, Lai received a star on the Walk of Fame at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in 2019.

Lai is currently Artistic Director of Performance Workshop, Taiwan; and Theatre Above, Shanghai, a venue dedicated to the performance of his works, and where he is also Co-founder of Theatre Training Above. He is Co-founder, Festival Director and Jury Head of Wuzhen Theatre Festival.

About Theatre Above

Founded in 2015, Theatre Above is a 699-seat venue in the heart of Shanghai, designed by Artistic Director Stan Lai and dedicated to staging his own body of works for the theatre, as well as new works in the Chinese speaking world. The theatre has since established itself as one of Shanghai's leading venues for dramatic art, with its own acting company forming the nucleus of many new works. Nai-chu Ding leads the production and management team. Since opening, the venue has produced plays by Stan Lai including Sand on a Distant Star, A Servant of Two Masters, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, The Village, Winter Journey, The Blue Horse, Circle Story, The Whale Library, Millennium Teahouse, Crosstalk Travelers, Writing In Water, The Hidden Treasure, A Dream Like A Dream, 1108, Ago.