Monkey King musical makes jaws drop

The modernized version of the famous Monkey King musical makes jaws drop with its contemporary twists. Photo provided to China Daily

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Stimac invited the American team including James Racheff, who has been a playwright and lyricist for more than 25 years; the songwriter Louis St. Louis, who is also composer of the famous film Grease (1978) in which John Travolta sang the hit Sandy; and the Emmy Award nominee choreographer Bubba Carr.

"Monkey King in China is like Hamlet in the West, you have thousands of versions: Peking Opera, movie, TV...We have many modern dressed productions of Shakespeare, why not do a Monkey King that has never been done before," Stimac says in his Beijing office.

"We consider the Monkey King as China who overcomes all the difficulties and challenges and now has big power while the Heaven is like the West who always told China what to do. Now China has all the power, but learning to use that power now on the world scale is what China is dealing with and that is what the monkey has to do in the story."

The musical portrays a very touching relationship between the monkey and his fellow primates, the monkey and his master, and the monkey and his enemies.

"We want to humanize the characters. It's pretty hard to feel sympathy for Superman, because he can do anything. And the Monkey King is China's Superman. China invented the super hero 600 years ago before Iron Man, Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, and super heroes are very popular now in commercial entertainment. So we feel good to let the West know the Chinese super hero. But we want him to be as human as possible, so people could care about him," Stimac says.

As for the Dragon King, they add the element that he is very concerned about his belongings. The monkey comes and wants the weapon from him but he refuses.

"Many men and women in the world always fight over such matters. The wife wants to keep everything and the husband wants to throw them out. We think it's a human character," Stimac says.

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