A fresh breeze from the East

When Chen Shi-Zheng staged the 400-year-old kunju opera, “Peony Pavilion” -- all 19 hours of it -- for the Lincoln Center Festival in 1999, probably only a handful who attended knew much about this dated form of what used to be generically called Peking Opera. For the vast majority of us, the art form represented an antique, exotic, and nearly vanished, world of expressive hand gestures, elegantly stylized walks, strangely vocalized speech song and oddly communal sounding folk music.

But beautiful and compelling beyond imagining, “Peony Pavilion” proved richly expressive, brilliantly theatrical, powerfully moving and, to the enormous surprise of many, addictively entertaining. Most astonishing of all, the show and its 400-year-old traditions felt fresh and alive, which is more than could be said for the tired Broadway musicals found a few blocks -- and half a theatrical world -- away.

The obvious conclusion was that Broadway could learn a trick or two hundred from kunju, just as Stephen Sondheim once freshened up the Great White Way with a dose of the ancient Japanese Noh theater in his “Pacific Overtures.” But who would have thought that it might work the other way, that contemporary Broadway and music video techniques could revitalize archaic Chinese operas?

That has been Chen’s mission of late. Now under the auspices of the Center for New Theater at CalArts, Chen has turned “Peach Blossom Fan,” a classic kunju opera from 1699 by Kung Shang-Ren, into something altogether new.

Given a convincing new text by playwright Edward Mast and clever Sondheimesque lyrics and engaging songs by Stephin Merritt, “Peach Blossom Fan” was designed to show off REDCAT, the flexible black box theater that CalArts operates in the bowels of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. And that it does. Merely the opportunity of spending 80 minutes in this alluring Chinese wonderland designed by Christopher Barreca and entrancingly lighted by Shaun Fillion with its fluttering peach blossom curtain, translucent glass floor and catwalk, wall of video projections and neon dragonfly, is worth the price of admission.

In the original “Peach Blossom Fan,” a young, as yet untouched courtesan, Shiang-Jun, falls for a dreamy young poet, Hou Fang-Yu. But they refuse the protection of an unscrupulous playwright, Yuen Da-Cheng, who worms his way into the childish new Emperor Fu’s graces. When the Emperor takes a fancy to Shiang-Jun, she smashes her skull on the floor. It ends badly, with the Emperor overthrown and Shiang-Jun never regaining her senses.

Merritt’s facile and often funny rhymes and breezy Broadway melodic style have an easy, natural flow that Chen then makes complex through his use of florid operatic movements. Musically the mix of genres is jokey. When courtesans present the classic Chinese fan dance for the emperor, it sounds like a calypso number. Next they get out their ukuleles and sing. “Not another ukulele song,” bemoans the petulant Emperor, who happens to be a cross between a florid kunjun singer speaking in elongated soprano flourishes, and a Handelian countertenor.

In some aspects, “Peach Blossom Fan” retains the quality of an experiment. Through extensive workshops at CalArts mainly with students and recent grads, along with a handful of seasoned actors, Chen clearly had to work hard to teach the effortless elegance of movement and presence that Chinese opera performers work a lifetime to perfect.

That effort is most noticeable in lovers Shiang-Jun (Ja’nai Amey) and Hou (Alan Loayza), on whom conventional Broadway hangs. There is also the danger, not always overcome, of caricature, as in Fran Bennett’s overdone Chastity Plum, the madam.

But there are also outstanding performances -- John David Casey plays faintly depraved official Yang Long-Yo as if straight out of a David Lynch film. Mary Lou Rosato, Prime Minister Ma Shi-Ying, is a striking comic presence. As Gen. Shih Ko-Fa, Zhou Long, the one traditionally trained kunju performer in the cast, is mesmerizing. Matthew Steiner rises to the Emperor’s highflying idiocy.

An astute four-member ensemble of marimba, Chinese yangqin, bass and steel drums further emphasizes multiculturalism, but its metallic sound loses novelty after a while. There is only so much a steel drum can do. Likewise “Peach Blossom Fan” peters out at the end, losing steam more than ending elegiacally. But a lot of what is mixed up in this new theatrical laboratory brings new theatrical compounds, and some of them have the potential to extend the life of the moribund musical.

*

‘Peach Blossom Fan’

Where: REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 2nd and Hope streets, L.A.

When: Tuesday to Sundays, 8:30 p.m.

Ends: April 24

Price: $34 to $38

Contact: (213) 237-2800

Running time: 90 minutes