Liu Xiaoye & Yin Wang
Presented by Adelaide Festival Centre
Reviewed 30 SepT 2016
With it’s official opening night performance cancelled last night due to the infamous poor weather Adelaide has experienced this week, Two Dogs finally got the chance to leave a mark, or in this case ‘mark their territory’ on the OzAsia Festival.
Actors Liu Xiaoye & Yin Wang are part Tokyo Shock Boys/part Abbott and Costello in this comedy directed by China’s most influential Director Meng Jinghu, and have great comic timing despite performing in their native Mandarin language. There are subtitles displayed on monitors, and they occasionally banter in English, but the humour isn’t lost on the audience who laughed all the way through.
The story focuses on dogs Wang Cai and Tan Fu, who journey to the city from their country habitat to pursue dreams of happiness and fulfilment. They soon discover that all that glitters is not gold, and end up in a reversal of fortune tale that has the odd moment of sadness. Both actors excel in physical comedy, and occasionally break into song accompanied by 2 guitarists sitting in the sidelines, adding to the decadent aesthetic of Meng Jinghui’s work.
There are lots of improvised moments, many of which would have been lost on non-Chinese speaking audience members, but this is after all a celebration of all things Asian. There were though, some very clever and humorous observations of Adelaide/Australia thrown in which showed they’d done some research.
What I took from the performance was the importance of friendship, belonging, unity in adversity and coming to the conclusion that there’s really no place like home. It is a Warhol-esque adventure with a grungey twist ending- actor Liu Xiaoye sings a rendition of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, and Iggy Pop’s Now I wanna Be Your Dog, sending the audience out with their tails between their legs!
Two Dogs is funny, energetic, busy, and despite being quite loose in its structure, is an entertaining look at life in the big city from a Dog’s eye view.
The final performance will be Sat, 1 Oct 2016, 5:00PM
Venue: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Tickets http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/two-dogs/
Review by Dazz Hassan
Twitter: @DazzHassan
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