In October 2024, the Beijing People’s Art Theater (PAT) once again brought its signature play, Lao She’s “Teahouse,” to Shanghai. The show had little new to offer longtime fans: the staging was the same as the play’s debut in 1958, and many of the actors are now in their 60s, having been ensconced in their roles for years, if not decades. Even Feng Yuanzheng, the current head of the PAT, thinks the show is overdue for an update: He told domestic media that the play should be handed over to a new generation of performers.

“Teahouse” is the most famous work of post-1949 Chinese theater. Written by Shu Qingchun — better known by his pen name, Lao She — in 1956, it tells the story of Wang Lifa, the shrewd, kindhearted, but ultimately doomed boss of a teahouse during the turbulent first half of China’s 20th century.

The Beijing People’s Art Theater first brought “Teahouse” to the stage in 1958. Directed by Jiao Juyin and Xia Chun and starring Yu Shizhi, it was an instant hit and cemented the theater’s reputation as a leader in Chinese drama. After Lao She’s suicide in 1966, “Teahouse” was banned for more than a decade. It returned in 1979 and toured Europe the following year. By 1988, when the original cast reunited for a warmly received 30th anniversary performance in Shanghai, it had become the mainstay of the PAT’s repertoire.

Even in those days, however, some critics wondered if the play had fallen victim to its own success. The PAT’s staging was inextricably tied up with Jiao and Yu’s original vision for the show: Everything from the blocking to the performances remained just as it was in 1958. Was there really only one way to perform “Teahouse”?

These questions were also being asked inside the Beijing PAT. In the late 1980s, in addition to “Teahouse,” the group put on stagings of “Death of a Salesman,” directed by playwright Arthur Miller, “The Top Restaurant” by up-and-coming dramatist He Jiping, and “Absolute Signal” by the small-theater pioneer Lin Zhaohua. Lin also expressed interest in restaging “Teahouse.” Jiao, the play’s original director, had died, and Lin was doubtful the theater great would still insist on staging the 1958 version exactly as it was.

In Jiao’s absence, the primary challenge to a restaged “Teahouse” was Yu. In 1992, the venerable actor played Wang Lifa for the last time. Although he discussed reimagining “Teahouse” with Lin Zhaohua for several years, he remained reluctant to give his blessing. It wasn’t until 1999, on the 100th anniversary of Lao She’s birth, that Yu finally relented and Lin set about creating a more contemporary version.

In rehearsals, Liang Guanhua, cast in the role of Wang, was explicitly told not to imitate Yu, but to put his own spin on the role, including a greater emphasis on Lao She’s black sense of humor. The results left something to be desired. In contrast to Jiao’s abridged script, the 1999 version presented Lao She’s original in full. But Lin’s updated version received only mixed reviews. Conservative theatergoers and critics argued that “Teahouse” should retain the flavor of Old Beijing and expressed a desire for the show to be treated more like traditional Chinese opera, where students are required to mimic the performance of their masters. Lin himself gave the show a score of 60 points out of 100, though for a different reason: “There was nothing new, it just continued the past,” he said.

In 2005, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of director Jiao Juyin’s birth, Lin and the Beijing PAT once again staged the 1958 version of “Teahouse.” Ever since, PAT posters for “Teahouse” have featured the same directors: “Jiao Juyin and Xia Chun.”

For years, many attributed the lack of alternative stagings to the PAT’s control of the rights to “Teahouse.” But according to Shu Ji, one of Lao She’s daughters, this wasn’t the case. From 1966 until the end of 2016, no other troupe ever approached the Lao She estate about staging a new version of the play.

In 2017, “Teahouse” entered the public domain, and other troupes finally tried their hand at the play. Director Li Liuyi staged a new version with the Sichuan People’s Art Theater, for example. The show used Sichuan dialect rather than the original Beijing dialect, but otherwise was still based on Jiao’s work.

That same year, the rising director Wang Chong made a bolder attempt at updating “Teahouse” for modern audiences. His “Teahouse 2.0” was staged at a middle school in Beijing. The size of the audience was strictly limited, with only 55 people able to watch the play over its five performances. The play did not alter Lao She’s text, but featured children in school uniforms instead of teahouse patrons and workers.

At first, the language and the environment felt somewhat incongruous, but as the play continued, Lao She’s text gradually aligned with the power dynamics of a school campus. Shu, Lao She’s daughter, attended a performance and came away impressed, saying she hoped similar performances could be set in factories or offices.

Unfortunately, because of its highly limited run, “Teahouse 2.0” remains relatively obscure in China.

Better known is acclaimed experimental theater director Meng Jinghui’s 2019 take on “Teahouse.” Meng replaced the Beijing teahouse with a giant rotating steel wheel and mixed lines from the script with passages from Bertolt Brecht, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Heiner Müller. The original storyline was shuffled about, and the actors told to shout their lines.

Divorced from the identities of the characters and its historical context, Lao She’s text was transformed into a noisy display set in almost circular time, in which the sufferings of ordinary people in the past happen again in the future.

It was a major break from the orthodox understanding of the show, in which “Teahouse” is seen as being about longing for a new, better life. Unsurprisingly, the play opened to huge controversy, with most audience members complaining that they couldn’t understand it, while scholars of modern and contemporary Chinese literature criticized it as “unrecognizable” and “no longer Lao She’s ‘Teahouse.’”

Interestingly, Shu supported Meng’s vision. She expressed her belief that he opened a door and drew the attention of the contemporary theater world to Lao She. “The playwright is dead, the script will not change, but the stage continues to evolve and change,” she told domestic media. However, Shu also admitted that among the current versions, she still considered Jiao’s 1958 original to be the most unforgettable.

Theater critic Lin Kehuan once attempted to identify what made Jiao’s take on “Teahouse” so timeless. In his opinion, it wasn’t that the 1958 version was artistically unimpeachable. Rather, it was a milestone in the history of Chinese drama. “(Jiao) showed people working in the theater overseas the heights that realistic drama in China could achieve,” Lin wrote.

More importantly, Jiao’s vision and way of thinking matched that of Lao She. Wang Lifa is a conciliatory nobody who is harmed by wrongdoers but also trapped in a world he’s grown to hate. This is the painful nostalgia Lao She conceals within “Teahouse” — and a feeling that Jiao Juyin both experienced and empathized with deeply. It is difficult to say the same thing about subsequent directors.

Perhaps that’s why the 1958 staging of “Teahouse” quickly came to be regarded as a national mythos of sorts, a totem of literary and artistic originality in the New China. It’s a time capsule from an era that shook the world. But that shouldn’t keep later generations from engaging with Lao She’s masterpiece on their own terms. “Teahouse” may be legendary, but it doesn’t need to be worshipped.

Translator: David Ball; editor: Wu Haiyun. 

(Header image: A stage photo of a Beijing PAT staging of “Teahouse,” February 2024. Li Chunguang/Beijing PAT)