Author: Zheng Rongjian (media person)
The latest version of "Cold Plum" (screenwriter Luo Huaizhen , director Han Jianying) continues the consistent style of Luo Huaizhen's dramatic conception, with a stronger dramatic nature and a generous and simple artistic style, making people feel the new modern atmosphere of willow branches through history.
suspense and conflict, always running at a high level, is the most prominent feature of Huai Opera "Cold Plum". Hanmei, who is a wife and a mother, supports her to fight in such a harsh and tragic environment? On the one hand, the tragic sacrifice of comrades and her only luck survived, not only deepened Hanmei's hatred for the enemy, but also carried her sense of responsibility to insist on fighting and avenge her comrades. On the other hand, she has children in her belly, and she wants to keep them as a mother, and she is ashamed of being a wife, and what does it have to do with her traitor husband Li Binghui? Under this situation, the adherence to faith becomes very specific.
The remnant of the execution ground is a real disaster; learning that my husband is betrayed and being misunderstood by the villagers on the mountain is a spiritual collapse. Hanmei has suffered so much, why is she still persevering? Why do you risk your own sacrifice and miscarriage of the child in your stomach? Because of hatred for enemies, responsibility for comrades and love for children. She resolutely chose to risk her life to warn the guerrillas, and it was precisely the process of warning the guerrillas that could protect the team, better fight against the enemy, and relieve her knot of heart that she had nowhere to escape - this miserable child who was born at the wrong time had a traitor father before she was born. What can Hanmei, as a mother, do? What do you want to do? Even if she dies, she must do something for her child. She took the risk of miscarriage and also revealed an unspeakable and heart-wrenching decision, that is, if she cannot successfully warn and cause losses to the revolution, the responsibilities she consciously bears and the stains behind her children can no longer be released and washed away. She is willing to take the children in her belly to fight for the dignity and honor of fate. This kind of questioning and test that penetrates deep into the individual's soul, combined with the plot of the character's insistence on revolutionary struggle, well reflects the complexity of the character's heart and the difficulty of insisting on faith.
Stills of the drama "Han Mei"
These plots, whether in text, performance or director's processing, strongly reflect Han Mei's physical and mental situation. Especially the Xingna , which plays Han Mei, is highly saturated singing almost throughout the audience, confusion, hesitation, anger, tenderness, firmness, different emotions and moods, like spirits, expressed with different modes of Huai Opera, and expressed them vividly, thus deeply infecting the audience.
This is prominently reflected in the drama between her and Li Binghui played by Lu Xiaolong. For example, when she met her husband Li Binghui in the second reunion, she was confused in her tragedy. All the party members died, but her husband was not included. She didn't want to conclude that her husband was a traitor, but the familiar hat told her that her husband was not dead, but where was he? Is he life or death? Will he be a patriot, a martyr or a traitor? Thinking but not daring to think, he turned into a dream. The stage setting opened and closed, and we met and left each other, and finally became a hat that was dazzling after waking up. It was shocking, confusing, and as if facing an abyss. When she saw her husband, she was lucky and calm, and she led Li Binghui to tell the truth step by step. Originally, Li Binghui was still condescending and regarded her as a country woman who was married with the chicken. She asked her to understand and persuade her to run away. She slapped her in the face. Li Binghui immediately knelt down, and the guest was transferred, which turned into her just judgment of the traitor. The latter is not completely emotional about his wife and children, but when these selfish plans that threaten him, he would raise a gun to his wife and Erxiu. In the fifth scene, the two of them were full of suspense and went up the mountain with different time and space, another Li Binghui's dream not only echoed and compared with the previous dream, but also corresponded to the fact that Han Mei was about to give birth and the child was about to bear the burden of history, thus forming a duet with the superposition of suspense and emotions of the two. The air-time and air conditioning of director
and the use of red silk, hats, dreams, etc. have also clearly established the freehand style of the entire stage.The heroic generosity expressed by the red silk is imagery; the plot of the braided hat is suspense; the two dreams echo the different states of mind between Han Mei and Li Binghui, which is a direct presentation of human nature and soul. All of these are not only the director's unique creation, but also the concrete externalization of the second creation after a deep understanding of the tension structure of the two people and two lines in this drama - in the face of human nature, one is a majestic and heroic posture, the other is humble and crawling. This is the profound and profound aspect of the innovation-transformed Huai Opera "Cold Plum".
In the stage design, several sets are split and aggregated, which dispatches different spaces of dreams and reality, indoors and outdoors, levels and mountains, and is also clean and bright. What is more regrettable is that the explanation of Han Mei’s motivation for going up the mountain is not clear enough, so that the space that could have been made big and deeply explored has not been fully opened. Because she is pregnant and someone can go up the mountain on her behalf, then her reason must be to transcend her life and death with her children. The only thing that can carry such a weight in the play is the responsibility for the life and death of a comrade and the knots that need to be unraveled in the depths of her soul.
To die generously for faith, Huai Opera "Cold Plum" uses such a narrative expression full of dramatic tension and a novel style of freehand painting to interpret a historical reality and also interprets the isomorphic nature of love and faith. Faith and original intention are originally because of love, because of loving this land and the people on the land.
"Guangming Daily" (12th edition, August 8, 2021)
Source: Guangming.com-Guangming Daily
