The Theater: Hsi Chu

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Chinese drama (hsi chü), like 100-year-old eggs, has few enthusiasts in the U.S. Westerners have difficulty staying awake through its mute, complex formality and its endless haggling with a ritual whose whole meaning may depend on the number of folds in an actor's sleeve. But last week a Chinese company of 14 did pretty well on Broadway.

Two months ago the Chinese Cultural Theater Group of Shanghai began a goodwill tour of the U.S. (they have already played San Francisco and Chicago, will next swing through the South) on a financial shoestring. The company left China with only $37,500 in cash and props, is now down to a daily food allotment of $3 apiece—in Manhattan. The one-night Broadway stand did not up the kitty much: a heavy sleet storm kept the house down. But those who came stayed awake.

They saw a fast-moving pageant of ritual dramas and folk plays, heard scratchy Ch'ing Dynasty blues and a half-dozen pieces by a "classical orchestra"—an ensemble that was ancient when Confucius was young. Though Broadway-farers made little sense out of the dancelike dramas, they liked the sword dance by Gardenia Chang, the gaudy plumage, rooster-strutting and extravagant simpers.

The music was the hit of the show. It was made on a collection of infernal-looking machines that appeared, to Western eyes, to be straight out of Dr. Fu Manchu:

¶ The ehr-hu, a loose-stringed violin, looks like a cross between a walkie-talkie and a strangler's cord. The performer clutches it in a nursing position, strokes it with a long bow, makes sounds like a violin with loose strings.

¶ The se, an antique, 25-stringed harp, looks like a huge, bunged-up kayak, makes sounds about like a dried pea dropped four feet into a saucepan.

¶ The p'i-p'a is a jumbo-size, four-string lute of surprising range and power. The climax of the company's program was a p'i-p'a solo, The Downfall of Chu, describing in great scalding floods of sound the gathering of armies, a wild battle, the grief and suicide. P'i-p'a Soloist Sung Yue-tuh took five curtain calls.