Camden Theatre Review | The Pilgriamge of the heart

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

The Review - THEATRE by RUBY JOSEPH
Published: 19 June 2008

Camden Theatre Review | The pilgrimage of the heart | etcetera theatre

THE PPILGRIMAGE OF THE HEART
Etcetera Theatre

BASED on a story by Eileen Zhang who wrote Lust, Caution, Simon Wu’s Pilgrimage of the Heart opens in the quaintly, well-to-do 1930s family living room in Shanghai.
Mother is dutiful whilst daughter Lin adores her father, who basks in the attentions of the women he loves.
But there are uncomfortable undercurrents: the daughter’s love for her father verges on the romantic, even the lustful.
Vera Chok’s portrayal of Lin is compulsive, obsessive and more than sensuous.
Jamie Zubairi carries the masculinity of the father figure well, though he is several years younger than the character he plays. He draws on this youthfulness in the playful, childlike scenes with his daughter.
The audience is not privy to the cause of the family’s dysfunction, only that the mother’s parents disowned her when she eloped with her husband.
Undermined in his career by the Japanese 1937 occupation, the father’s bruised ego is flattered by his daughter’s Oedipal cravings. As she persists in her attempts to prize him from her mother, a pall is cast over the family unit.
Tina Chiang as the mother is a woman who keeps up appearances in the knowledge that something is amiss. When she is confronted with the incestuous truth she rages with the fury of a woman spurned and betrayed.
Shan Ng’s production engages throughout its 75 minutes. All three actors communicate their tortured feelings with conviction on the small Etcetera stage, which is evocatively dressed and illuminated with a backdrop of small lights shining, dimly, through a translucent blue and gold screen.
Until June 22
020 7482 4857

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment:

» A-Z of Theatre
» Local Reviews
» Local Listings
» West End Reviews
» West End Listings
» Theatre Tickets
» Theatre & Hotel Packages