It might be the most highly anticipated play in Beijing this year. Brothers, adapted from Yu Hua's acclaimed novel of the same title, produced by Shanghai Artistic Drama Center, will tour Beijing from September 30 to October 4 at Poly Theater.

Xu Zheng plays Bald Li.

The main reason behind the high expectation is that Yu's novel is a sensation itself. The novel was a hit when it was released in August 2005 and soon became the talk of the town in many cities, a scene quite rare for fiction in China. It topped the country's literature best-seller charts immediately after hitting the market.

A good play must have an interesting story. Yu has a gift for telling stories, but how to tell it in a theater is another thing.

What's more, Yu has not shied away from violence in his narration. He does not become maudlin and somehow retains humor demonstrating a cold-bloodedness, especially showed in his descriptions of the scenes of cruelty during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). For one moment the readers will even wonder whether these scenes could really have happened because they are so absurd.

Therefore, people all felt curious about how it would be performed on stage. The playwright Li Rong and director Xiong Yuanwei's solution is to avoid the "cultural revolution" part of the first half of the novel and focus on the second half which depicts the protagonists' life in the 1980s and 1990s, because "the second half of the novel concerns today's social condition more," Li says.

Though it might disappoint some of Yu's followers because the first half is considered better in terms of narration and language, the play's premiere in Shanghai in May and June turned out to be a great success. The sold-out 15 shows resulted in a box-office revenue that has ranked second only to a comic adapted from a popular TV soap opera.

The novel tells the personal history of the two protagonists Li Guangtou (Bald Li) and Song Gang, a pair of stepbrothers, in chronicle order. The first half deals with the tribulations of the two brothers' childhood and adolescence in the midst of the "cultural revolution", while the second half, set in the present day, follows the fates of the two brothers separately. Bald Li shows a talent for business, becoming head of a small factory where all the workers are disabled. His stepbrother Song, however, wins love. He marries Lin Hong, the woman Bald Li falls in love with too.

Director Xiong focuses on the special bond between the stepbrothers, but changes some details to make it fit the theater. For example, the novel begins in the restless early youth of Bald Li who gets caught while peeping at women in a public toilet. In the play, he peeps at women showering. The "virgin competition" is changed into a beauty pageant. To focus on the leading roles of the brothers and Lin Hong, some supporting characters in the novel were left out.

"I have tried to maintain Yu's original cold humor and absurdity. Though the audience burst into laughter from time to time, the full-length play is is a tear-jerking production, melodramatic and sentimental," says the director.

The success of the play is also credited to Xu Zheng who acts Bald Li.

The actor, who does not conceal his dislike of the novel, gives a vivid performance.

"I don't like the narration of the novel. I even could not finish reading the first 10 pages because the only thing the 10 pages tell is how Bald Li peeps at women in a public toilet," says Xu, who gradated from the Shanghai Academy of Drama in 1994 and has been active in theater and TV.

"I have nothing in common with Bold Li or any similar personalities. So I did not think I fit the role. Usually I prefer to play a character that resembles me or that I appreciate. But director Xiong believes I could be a perfect Bald Li and persuaded me to do it."

Interestingly, the writer Yu has avoided any contact with the play until recently he signed 200 books which will be given as gifts to those who buy the VIP tickets to the Beijing run. He did not help adapt the story, nor go to rehearsals, hasn't watched the play so far and refuses to comment on it.

When asked whether he will go to see the play when it runs in Beijing, the author answered "no" and asked: "Why should I go to watch it?"

"He is such a wise writer that he says nothing, allowing us to adapt the play freely and making himself an open-minded onlooker," says the playwright Li.

(China Daily September 26, 2007)