The White Snake by ReAct

Last week, I read Theatre of the Unimpressed by Jordan Tannahill. The book rages – artfully – against plays that never ask themselves the question, why does this need to be done in front of a live audience.

It’s a happy coincidence, then that the first play I have seen since reading the book was The White Snake, produced by ReAct and now playing at 12th Avenue Arts. The show knows exactly why it needs to be done in front of a live audience. It’s because it goes back to the roots of theater, people telling stories to one another, to the audience, to me.

It’s a beautiful story, simply told. At the top, three actors begin narrating directly to the audience, spooling out playwright Mary Zimmerman’s version of the Chinese legend, dating in written form to the Ming Dynasty. After the context is set, three other actors begin playing the parts of White Snake, Green Snake, and Xu Xian as the narrators and the rest of the ensemble begin playing various other parts, including a monk, a boatman, a Crane Spirit and more.

White Snake and Green Snake, being bored and restless as immortals, decide to take human form, come down from Mount Emei and experience the dusty world of everyday people. Soon White Snake falls for Xu Xian. After Green Snake plays matchmaker, they marry. Of course, you know this marriage of a mortal with an immortal will not come to a good end and that a lesson will be learned. There was a lesson but it spun off from what I thought it would be and was far more touching and powerful than I expected.

Theatre of the Unimpressed also goes after plays that insist on realism and forget that they are plays. The White Snake uses simple techniques and materials to maximum effect. Blue sheets of fabric are held and moved up and down by actors at opposite ends of the stage to represent water. I love this. I am a sucker for it, whether in a zero-budget production or on stage at the Fifth Ave three years ago in Jasper in Deadland. Ribbons of white fabric are used to represent wind. And in one instance, a silvery piece of fabric attached to an invisible fishing line (presumably) made me audibly gasp when it moved. Simple props well used evoke simple and strong emotions, I guess.

There were other times I let out an involuntary “uh-oh” or two when it looked like White Snake’s secret might be revealed to Xu Xian. The nature of the story and the way ReAct told it made me want to participate in that way. Sitting here now, two hours later, I wish I had been a bit more vocal to see if I could have gotten the rest of the audience to share their reactions with everyone else. I think it’s great to knock down the fourth wall with earnest narration like The White Snake does and I think it would be OK for audience to acknowledge that there are no walls between us either – which kind of ends up being the message of the play.

Pictured: the West Lake, in Hangzhou, the setting for some scenes in the play, taken by me on my visit there in 2007. Photo added 11/16/18 and replaces the original photo I included with this post. 

This post originally appeared on my Facebook page on November 15, 2018.