digitalbugsy

Jay organised for a bunch of us to go to see the Shaolin Monks perform their Wheel of Life show. It wasn’t what I expected… it was actually a story, rather than just a Kung Fu demonstration (though that did come later). The basic story is this. A long time ago, in a province far far away, traditional martial arts training was outlawed, so the Shaolin Monks created their own form mimicing the animals around them with stances taking on animal forms (e.g. Crouching Tiger or Hidden Dragon ).

The Story:
The monks offer their services to their emporer, and he enlists them to protect him from a local warlord. They defeat him and the emporer wants them to remain as his protectors. The monks decline and the emporer seeks revenge. The emporer poisons the monks and very nearly wipes them out forever, however 5 survive and the rebuilding of the temple begins…

The story was fairly simple and while the fight scenes were impressive it looked very choreographed and I was about to write them off as just being actors (albiet highly trained), when the martial arts display at the end began…

The Demonstration
The demonstration was very impressive, and removed any doubt in my mind of their abilities. Notable bits…

• The 6-7 year old monks doing flips from foot-head-foot-head.
• The monk who took two spears, anchors them at two other monks’ feet, and proceeded to bend the spears by pushing on the points with his neck.
• The monk who had two wooden poles snapped over his back at full force.

All in all very impressive…

This is a stage production of the Ken Kesey novel of the same name, starring Christian Slater… who I must say looks a LOT like Jack Nicholson from the screen version, well same balding pattern anyway…

Our seats were in the very back row of the upper circle, with a perfect view of Slater’s bald spot, but that didn’t detract from what was a most excellent piece of entertainment. I’ve never actually read the story or seen the whole movie, so the story line was entirely new to me and had me hooked from the outset…

The interaction between Christian Slater’s McMurphy and Nurse Ratched is a fantastic power-play, both with very strong personalities. Each has their own strong card to play - McMurphy’s being his ability to get his fellow patients to open up and rise up against Ratched’s authority; and Nurse Ratched with her threats of ‘treatment’, which McMurphy doesn’t understand the extent of until much furthur down the path, at which point it is almost too late to turn back.

The first half was very much controlled by McMurphy, his antics giving Nurse Ratched a run for her money. It looks like she is going to snap at any point… The second half is very much controlled by Nurse Ratched, her authority and threats start to become reality, McMurphy is subjected to electric shock treatments, and he becomes very much more aware of the strength Ratched has but continues in his quest to make her snap, organising a party and for one of the inmates to lose his virginity. This becomes the last straw for Ratched and she goads McMurphy into attacking her… The result of the attack is the most extreme of ‘treatments’, McMurphy is lobotomised…

The entire story is dig at Mental Institutions of the time the story was writen. McMurphy is completely sane (in the broadest sense) with his institutionalisation a way of a not going to jail, and Ratched seeing insanity in everything he does, resulting in the most dire of situations…

Anyway,

Thanks Mark for organising this…