SNOW IN MIDSUMMER
* (out of 5)
Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, 2 hours, 10 minutes, one intermission. Ends Oct. 5
Adaptation written by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Based on a Yuan dynasty drama by Guan Hanqing, “The Injustice to Dou E that Moved Heaven and Earth.” Director: Nina Lee Aquino

Penny-Lynn Cookson
Special to The Lake Report

Have we become blasé about global climate change? Unresponsive to corporate greed? Uncaring about injustice and inequality? Inured to guns, murder and casual violence? Unfazed by coarse language? Unmoved by family melodramas?

“Snow in Midsummer” is a baffling blizzard of these themes swirling around the story of a young widow accused and executed for a murder she did not commit.

Her revenge will be snow in midsummer that will destroy crops followed by three years of drought, dust storms, devastation and locusts.

Ghost-like, the deceased Duo Yi’s memory drifts in and out of the consciences of those who inhabit New Harmony, a remote factory town in the east coast province of Jiangsu, China.

We, the audience, are in a whiteout trying to find our way, seeking clarity in this convoluted story.

All the action takes place within an empty rectangular floor space symbolic of the drought and emptiness brought to land and lives.

This space is surrounded on four sides by a stone wall one to two feet high suggesting the confinement of those trapped within the town. Two chairs are used as props when necessary. The time is the present and three years prior.

Tianyun Lin (Donna Soares), an entrepreneur businesswoman, arrives with her teenage daughter Fei-Fei (a hyper-fey Eponine Lee) to buy the defunct factory.

She wishes to manufacture fake flowers as no live flowers are growing in the surrounding dry wasteland. But what really is her motive?

The seller is Handsome Zhang (Michael Man) who limps, supported by a cane, due to a foot smashed in a vicious fight.

Handsome is gay, keen to quickly sell and move away with his lover, an ailing, wan and weak Rocket Wu (Jonathan Tan).

Other characters drift in and out. Dr. Lu (Kelly Wong) is an unethical, smooth surgeon eviscerating and selling for profit the organs of the deceased. Eyes going here, hands there, innards everywhere and no organ donation forms to fill out.

In the marketplace, three stooge police officers jostle, jest, threaten and insult one another and others with gratuitous coarse language. Workers sweep presumably dead locusts while we, in the audience, sit stupefied for a good five minutes or more.

The space becomes a drinking bar run by Nurse Wong (Manami Hara) and a massage parlour where the elderly Mother Cai inflicts excruciating pain on her clients to exorcise evil.

Daughter Fei-Fei is obsessed and possessed by the spirit of her “snow princess sister.” She acquires a heart, once Duo Yi’s, transplanted to Rocket which after his death, she buries and waters to grow new spiritual life.

The overbearing Master Zhang (John Ng) tries to force his son Handsome to marry and maintain family honour and continuity. The homophobic, brutal assault of his son leads to his own death.

To protect the murderer, a corrupt “on the take” judge orders the immediate execution of the innocent Duo Yi (understudy Lindsay Wu).

She is accompanied on her journey to the underworld by the guardians Ox-Head and Horse-Face.

In Chinese mythology, the Ox-Head and Horse-Face heads are atop human male bodies. They capture human souls and bring them before the courts of Hell where they will be rewarded or punished according to how they performed during their lifetimes.

Duo Yi is clearly rewarded as she drifts up and down stairs from the underworld, always beautifully coiffed and clothed in the finest Jiangsu silk flowing gowns.

The mystery solved, the true murderer arrested, Duo Yi exonerated, mother/daughter relationships restored, peace, hope and plenty will return to the land.

“Snow in Midsummer” is part of a trilogy commissioned from Cowhig by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, as part of their Chinese Translation Project, a cultural-exchange program. It premiered in 2017.

The 13th-century love story and drama to right the wrongs of injustice has been brought into contemporary times.

The play and this production simply do not work. Too many ingredients are thrown into the mix of themes, character identities, sound bangs, music, lights, constant coming and going and plot confusion.

This fortune cookie, on breaking open, reveals nothing. It is empty.

Penny-Lynn Cookson is an arts and culture historian, writer and lecturer living in Niagara-on-the-Lake.