Best bets

Broadway Musicals Wicked in Shanghai

Date: April 15-May 10 - 7:15 pm

Venue: Shanghai Culture Square

Price: 80-780 yuan

An international company of over 70 cast, crew and musicians will travel to China, with an additional 20 local crew and 7 musicians hired in Shanghai. This "eye-poppingly lavish show" includes 300 award-winning costumes, spectacular scenery, lighting and projections and a dazzling array of technical wizardry. Based on the international best-selling novel by Gregory Maguire that ingeniously re-imagines the stories and characters created by L. Frank Baum in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Wicked tells the incredible untold story of an unlikely but profound friendship between two sorcery students. Their extraordinary adventures in Oz will ultimately see them fulfill their destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Gabriela Montero Piano Recital

Date: April 22 - 7:30 pm

Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts

Price: 100-200 yuan

Gabriela Montero's visionary interpretations and unique improvisational gifts have won her a devoted following around the world. Anthony Tommasini remarked in The New York Times, "Montero's playing has everything: crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power in climactic moments, soulful lyricism in the ruminative passages and, best of all, unsentimental expressivity."

The Magic of Rhythm in Shanghai

Date: April 15-23 - 8 pm

Venue: ET Space, Shanghai

Price: 180-330 yuan

This original creation sets off with Ta-Dam, a magician who's trying to show his young audience all the splendor of his magical art. After many situations and despite themselves, Jim-Be and Tech-Nico, the two school janitors, divert this magical show toward the discovery and exploration of another fascinating art: the magic of rhythm! With every new situation, the characters and the audience will be transported into the fascinating worlds of gumboot. Audience members collectively play drumsticks in a percussive dance. The musical will end in the explosive African drums. It's an energizing interactive musical show!

NCPA Drama Jane Eyre (Chinese Version)

Date: April 15-19 - 7:30 pm

Venue: National Center for the Performing Arts

Price: 200-880 yuan

In June 2009, Jane Eyre pioneered by NCPA was staged for the first time, and this was also the first interpretation of Charlotte Bronte's classical novel of the same name on the stage of drama in China. Wang Xiaoying and Yu Rongjun served as the stage director and the playwright respectively. Ever since its debut in 2009, this drama version of Jane Eyre has been performed many times at NCPA and other theaters and has toured in such cities as Shanghai, Chongqing, Ningbo, Hangzhou and Fuzhou province. Three actresses - Yuan Quan, Chen Shu and Zhu Jie - have dedicated themselves to the performance, presenting this elegant and independent English lady for the audience.

Beijing Kunqu Opera - Two Belles in Love

Date: April 15-29 - 7:30 pm every Saturday

Venue: Zhengyici Theater

Price: 280-880 yuan

Two Belles in Love is a lesbian-themed Chinese opera based on a 350-year-old play by Li Yu. The 2010 production was headed by Stanley Kwan, the first openly gay film director in the Chinese cinema scene. The premiere marked a shift in representations of homosexuality in contemporary China which did not remove homosexuality from the list of official mental illnesses until 2001. Publicity for the production plastered the city with imagistic challenges to the heteronormative visual landscape. The premier coincided a wider trend reviving the practice of male performers portraying female roles, discouraged since Communist victory in 1949. I analyze the production and its reception as examples of Chinese opera receiving comparatively more official and cultural leeway than other modes of cultural production to portray sexual diversity on the post-Mao Chinese stage.

Yang Liping Ballet - Peacock of Winter

Date: April 15 - 7:30 pm

Venue: Hangzhou Theater

Price: 280-1,680 yuan

The dance drama Peacock is created and directed by Chinese famous choreographer and dancer Yang Liping. Since the debut of the drama in 2012, Peacock has been staged for hundreds of times at home and abroad. The peacock in the drama is not only a bird, but also a person and a member of sentient beings. The Peacock is in four parts titled Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter respectively to symbolize life's journey reflecting a story about growth, human nature and love. The characters in the drama embody the different levels of human nature, brightness & awareness, love & devotion, obsession & being lost, and fear & vanity. The story is about peacock as well as human nature, and it also a parable about life.

(China Daily 04/15/2017 page20)