A shipwreck at the HK Art Festival: The Tempest.

Ok, here we go again.

HK, like every year at this time at March, opens the doors to its cultural events. It's time to shout again hat we have culture and art spreading around town and HK is no less than NY or London or Milan.
From the Art Walk to the Art Festival via Rugby 7's (hang on, that's not cultural....but people just love to assist at parades of built apes in shorts who perform in front of a boozed up careless audience- give them a couple of hours and every chance of sensible conversation will be lost forever- of course! C'mon, who wouldn't be up for it?)we have the chance to say that in this town something actually CULTURAL goes on. Oh thank God, thanks thanks thanks, for a moment I thought I was living in a seedy city where all it matters was moneymoneymoneymoney....oh, thank goodness I'm not there!

The HKAPA gets packed with tons of boring bankers, lawyers and businessmen who don't give a hoot about theatre and cultural events but they just have to appear or, eventually, show their faces.
It's saturday night and we wait to take our seats and enjoy the performance of The Tempest; Sam Mendes, Academy Award for Best Picture in 1999 for American Beauty makes his debut in HK with one of the last pieces of the Theatre Master William Shakespeare.

The show starts, and after few minutes you start to realize how blank and plain the whole thing is; scenes too long, not a particular intense work on the actors, it felt like no one actually bothered to dig into characters and scenes work.
It was not an easy play to deal with- it was one of the last Shakespeare's work, and this fact emerges from his lines- of course Genius, Master of the Master, the First One of the Bunch and still, terribly human. At that time, Shakespeare was done with his work and he was slowly switching himself off.

However, if you describe to put it on because suddenly you realize you have an incredible vision with it, you should think about your poor audience who:
1) first of all, need to pee(2,5 hours and no break);
2) don't want to have a yawning competition and pay 600 dollars for that. In 40 minutes time I have probably stood up 5 times in order to let people get out. Sorry, but I hate being disturbed when I watch a show (and this lines also apply to my line above, about the restroom needs).
3) need variations, in style, in acting, no matter what.

Sam Mendes, winner at the Academy Awards 1999 with American Beauty, truly and utterly failed his experiment in front of his Sino Audience because too busy showing himself off on stage- yeah, sorry guys, at the end of the day, that was HIS Tempest, and no one else.

And now I think about those poor boring sods that appeared at the event just to give themselves a tone. If you've ever thought that theatre was boring, and then you came to watch this one, I might have to agree with you fella;not only boring, but also hideous and expensive.
However, I have good news for you, pity you'll never be interested in hearing that, but I'll tell you anyway.
There is something out there that it's called Community Theatre, and even though some shows that you might get to see are really crap, on the other side some others are really good- so good that they could have been easily on stage tonight even for less money.
These shows are on throughout the whole year and all those guys who perform for no money but only for their passion and desire would be happy in just having a full house, with loads of different people, like tonight- bankers, artists, lawyers, parents, unemployed people, teachers and simply, performances lovers.
Pity it will not happen.
Shame.