Golly, where’s Fuerza Bruta when you really need it?
That wild, high-octane, immersive spectacle, which enjoyed a 2007-2016 New York run, dealt out a lot more entertainment than Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise, a show that desperately strives to thrill audiences at The Shed and fails to do so majorly.
Billed as a kung fu musical, Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise offers a two hour-long mishmash of martial arts fighting, antic club-style choreography, aerial doings, laser-like strobe effects, and, oh yes, a clunky story vaguely written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who co-conceived this farrago with Chen Shi-Zheng, who stages it.
While this world premiere features plenty of simulated kung fu combat, a musical it is not. Half a dozen pop songs composed by Sia, such as “The Greatest” and “Courage,” here excessively remixed and heavily amplified, provide the canned soundtrack. By no means do these numbers illuminate the tale or push it along. In the meantime, it is impossible to tell whether the show’s 20 performers are lip-syncing or actually singing.
Set in and around Flushing, Queens, of all exotic locales, Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise centers on fraternal twins, boy and girl, separated as infants and reared to be martial arts warriors by their murderously estranged parents.
The details of some rigamarole concerning a legendary key to eternal life escape me, but whatever it signifies will motivate a duplicitous marriage, a mortal betrayal, a ritualistic funeral, and, of course, various exhibitions of kung fu fighting. There also are two interludes at night clubs where gyrating dancers wear what appear to be futuristic pajamas.
Anyway, the twins meet up when they are 18 years old and their nearly incestuous reunion on the dance floor leads to even further kung fu combat and, improbably enough, a happy ending.
All of this transpires within a cavernous open space that is overhung by a pale forest of fabric streamers and which features a semi-circular stage, a modest outcropping, and a spindly elevated skywalk. This leaves plenty of room for frequent martial arts mayhem upon the floor, which is accented by water and fire effects, and occasional aerial flights traveling up and down an 80-foot height. Ceaseless waves of pretty, if pretty busy, colored and patterned lighting manage to animate these proceedings considerably more artfully than the script, music, staging, or performances.
Perhaps connoisseurs of kung fu artistry will be able to appreciate Zhang Jun’s martial arts choreography, but otherwise Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise is a work of staggering inanity.
The event is performed in the McCourt space at The Shed, which has been configured to seat 1,200 spectators. (I suspect that plenty of free tickets are destined to be disbursed during the show’s month-long run.) It is not unusual for fledgling performing arts centers to need some time to find their artistic bearings, and this appears to be the case for The Shed’s first season. By all means, let’s look beyond this martial arts muddle in anticipation of The Shed’s next major endeavor.
