Forgotten 遗忘 by Daniel York Loh Brings and Underlooked Perspective to the European Theater

 

Most readers have a few favorite premises; for some people, pirate stories are inherently fascinating, for others, multi-generational family sagas are the best. For me, the narratives of soldiers who belong to a minority group fighting in a larger conflict are very interesting. Books like Tu by Patricia Grace and The World’s War by David Olusoga litter my TBR, and others like Tom Reiss’ The Black Count, have earned high ratings from me. So Forgotten 遗忘, a play by about the Chinese Labor Corps in the First World War, sounded absolutely wonderful. But could it ever live up to its premise?

It did its best.

British East Asian playwright Daniel York Loh keeps the narrative focus comparatively small, following a trio of friends from a small village in 1917 Shandong Province who, at the suggestion of their headman, enlist as laborers for the British Army. Old Six, Big Dog and Eunuch Lin, aided by Old Six’s wife and a literate man known only as “The Professor,”  endure the chaos of the European theater by performing Tales of the Marsh, an ancient, episodic Chinese story that mirrors their real-life troubles. Forgotten 遗忘 is not quite a musical, but it makes use of song and dramatic movement to underscore the characters’ circumstances and transition between scenes. I really enjoy this technique in plays, as I did when I read Richard Crane’s adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov. Once again there is no sheet music provided, but the lyrics are beautiful on their own, and they express the characters’ joy and frustrations appropriately.

“MEN: We hear the angry tune

With a fractured refrain

Of guns and dragoons

Beating time with chicane” (35)

This play is weary with foreknowledge. It’s clear from the first scene that the main characters will die, and moments of joy are all the more exhilarating because they feel stolen. This tone is common war stories, but is especially appropriate for those set in World War One because the audience knows there is more conflict on the horizon. Forgotten 遗忘 is set at an intermediate point in Chinese history, between the overthrow of the emperor and the Japanese invasion, and the language of the characters reflects the conflict between different cultural forces. Delicate operatic metaphors adorn strings of profanity, which mix with the Professor’s academic observations and the clipped commands of British and French officers. This style is a matter of taste, and it’s not my thing. Usually it’s just alienating.

“BIG DOG: Does anyone under heaven not hate us Chinese?

EUNUCH LIN: (Heavy irony) The Japanese like us.” (52)

Perhaps I enjoy stories like Forgotten 遗忘 because the main characters are outsiders by default. The acting troupe knows next-to-nothing about the causes of the war, and—as the English-speaking audience does—views it as a pointless conflict between indistinguishable imperial powers. Similarly, their commanding officers regard Old Six, Big Dog, Eunuch Lin and the Professor a shapeless, interchangeable mass of nonwhite labor. 

To highlight this misconception, York Loh gives the protagonists very distinct personalities, which sometimes borders on caricature: Old Six is amiable and heroic, Big Dog is coarse and hedonistic, and Eunuch Lin is clever and childish. Painting characters with such broad strokes isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it gives actors a lot of responsibility to add depth that isn’t present in the script. Great plays strike a balance between showing complexity on the page and being open to different interpretations, something that Small Mouth Sounds, one of my favorites, nails.

Luckily two characters, Second Moon and the Professor, are developed sufficiently. The former is Old Six’s wife and the only female member of the acting troupe. As she leaves home and assumes the role of the Miraculous Traveller, her quasi-magical journey contrasts with the harsh realism experienced by the other actors. The Professor is the only politically-conscious character, but his idealism and growing friendships are challenged by the unrelenting horror of trench warfare. His ultimate conclusion seems to mirror Forgotten 遗忘’s thesis about the relationship between China and its Western allies, but he’s more than just a mouthpiece for York Loh. He grounds the play and ties it to the wider world, even when he’s not correct.

“PROFESSOR: Have you never ever wondered why they’re so far ahead of us? Why they’re so small yet so strong? Whilst we’re so large but so weak...We could have carried on for another millennium dreaming the dreams of tortoises. But the rest of the world came calling and here we were. A humiliated backwater” (42).

Forgotten 遗忘 is just the kind of story I love, but it’s a little weak in the execution of its ideas. I can imagine a good production of it, which is more than I can say for other plays. And if you’re fascinated by the same premises as I am, it will be worth reading!