Led by the esteemed actor Li Baochun, the Taipei-based Li-yuan Peking Opera Theater will present The Wildness, adapted from Cao Yu's masterpiece, to the Poly Theater in Beijing on Saturday and Sunday.

The performance is a highlight of the on-going Beijing Music Festival, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

A scene from The Wildness features Jin Zi (played by Huang Yulin) and Chou Hu (played by Li Baochun). File photo

Unlike his other two masterpieces The Thunderstorm and Sunrise, that describe urban life, Cao set The Wildness in the countryside.

It tells the story of Chou Hu, who is wrongly imprisoned after being framed by Jiao Yanwang, a tyrannous landholder. Jiao also murders Chou Hu's father, forcibly takes possession of his family land, sells his sister to prostitution and takes Jin Zi, Chou Hu's sweet love, as his daughter-in-law. Chou Hu comes back to the village to exact his revenge on Jiao, but finds him dead. Jiao Daxing, his cowardly son and Chou Hu's boyhood friend, is there to support the family.

Disillusioned and depressed, Chou Hu kills Daxing and tricks Daxing's blind mother into beating Daxing's only son to death. He escapes with Jin Zi into the dark forest but soon becomes deranged and is shot dead by police.

Unfamiliar with rural life, Cao chose not to focus on class struggles, nor did he simply write about hatred. He employed modern expressionism, influenced by O'Neill's Emperor Jones, to portray the painful struggle inside Chou's heart and his awakening self-consciousness.

The Wildness is the most difficult of Cao's works to put on stage because of its many sketches of the confusing inner world of the protagonist and the violent environment that reflects the conflicts between the characters. It has been adapted for film, drama and Chinese operas. However, few have been successful and most interpretations fail to satisfy audiences and critics.

"Actually, the play is more suitable for opera. The rising and falling tunes in singing can better transmit the torture and depression of the characters," says Tian Benxiang, a drama researcher and Cao's student. He suggested The Wildness when the Li-yuan Theater told him they wanted to present Cao's works to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the master's death last year.

"Our play relates to true sentiments, the most extreme yet humane feelings in the world, through the thick and broad wild, the love fantasy in the sun and the bewilderment when the night falls upon the forest," says Li Baochun, the play's director and lead actor.

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