German genius Bertolt Brecht touted a style of social-issue theatre that kept audiences detached and openly displayed its mechanics. Roland Schimmelpfennig, currently Germany’s hottest playwright, takes Brecht’s philosophy to the extreme. In his 2009 tragicomedy, The Golden Dragon, now at Tarragon Theatre, women play men and vice versa, the casting is colour blind and the actors recite the stage directions.
Yet, for all that deliberate distancing, it’s hugely involving and ultimately heartbreaking. Tautly directed by Volcano Theatre’s Ross Manson and acted with breathless urgency by a role-juggling cast of five, it’s one of those astonishing works that makes even the most jaded theatregoer sit up and take notice.
The Golden Dragon is a Chinese-Thai-Vietnamese restaurant, where a frantic drama is unfolding in the steamy kitchen. One young Chinese man (Ansuree Roy) is going mad from a toothache. In between filling a steady stream of orders, his colleagues struggle to relieve him. Meanwhile, in the apartments above the eatery, related dramas are taking place.
Schimmelpfennig’s tone can shift in the blink of an eye from gut-busting comedy to gut-churning sexual violence. Kitchen-sink realism runs up against surreal fantasy. And Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper takes on a new, horrifying meaning. With its interlocking stories and theme of global connectedness, The Golden Dragon recalls the films of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel, Biutiful), but it’s also pure theatre at its most exhilarating. You’ve gotta love a show where the 70-year-old David Fox plays a young female flight attendant said to resemble a Barbie doll.
