Chapter 27 Part 1

The moment the front curtain was pulled aside, the set won a full house of applause.

The props that shocked the audience were indeed handcrafted by Ji Shuangyu and his apprentices, meticulously recreating the texture of real objects on a one-to-one scale. For example, the sable fur was actually rabbit fur brushed with shoe polish and then treated to give it a convincing sheen.

The large, expensive panes of glass in the windows were actually a type of electroplated wire mesh. After all, real glass would have been unsuitable for the stage due to reflections.

The so-called carved chairs weren't commissioned from a carpenter—that would have been too time-consuming and expensive. They were made from plaster and paper pulp using molds. The same went for the vases, lamps, and so on.

Though they looked expensive, the full set of props was not costly to make. They were lightweight, easy to use on stage, and could be reused in the future.

Of course, all these props served the plot. As the story unfolded, the audience became more and more immersed in this melodramatic tale.

Peerless Beauty had a slight fantasy element. The protagonist, “Yang Wanfeng,” was originally a carefree, philandering rich wastrel. After an accident where he thought he would die, Yang Wanfeng escaped death, only to inexplicably find his body transformed into a woman's.

Here, a slide projector was used to create the atmospheric effect of the body's transformation, and the actor was switched with an actress. Her appearance on stage once again won a full house of applause. Truly, she lived up to the title—a peerless beauty, as expected from a production directed by Ji Shuangyu, who was skilled at creating beauties.

Yang Wanfeng wanted to go home, but who would recognize him—her? The Yang family assumed Yang Wanfeng had gone missing.

How could the pampered Yang Wanfeng endure the hardships of the outside world? After a few days of sleeping rough, she was even harassed by hooligans.

Although Yang Wanfeng was a wastrel, she was familiar with her old social circle and was quick-witted. Under the curious gazes of the audience, while penniless, she exploited information asymmetry by posing as a socialite's maid to acquire jewelry and an evening gown from a department store. Without an invitation, she calmly slipped into a ball.

She used this stunningly beautiful face and her familiarity with her former friends to get reacquainted with them. She knew their weaknesses so well, making them spend money on her without letting her 'brothers' take advantage of her. It was all effortless.

Yang Wanfeng went from despising and being unaccustomed to this body to skillfully using it. She even came to think she was truly the best, that toying with her old friends was great fun—after all, they weren't good people anyway.

After some time, Yang Wanfeng successfully got her own uncle to recognize her as his goddaughter and was brought back to the Yang family.

Returning to the Yang family, it was with a different gender and a different identity. At first, Yang Wanfeng was like a fish in water, even playing tricks on relatives who coveted her beauty, leading to some amusing situations.

The audience watching this part found it naturally funny and satisfying, with an extremely fast pace.

The acting style of these performers was something no one had ever seen before.

They completely abandoned the old declamatory style of performance, nor were they like some actors who imitated roles from Western films. They were like real people from everyday life, yet their performances were refined, making them seem both authentic and possessing a brisk theatrical rhythm. The lines were colloquial, effortless to watch, and even had a familiar, local flavor.

Creating a realistic environment allowed everyone to witness scenes they'd never had the chance to see before.

Yang Wanfeng's several bold and successful schemes to get money and goods made audience members who had never seen later-generation crime films exclaim, "You can do that?!" The logic held up, but perhaps only a character like the protagonist would have such nerve—her character was unknowingly established.

The character of Yang Wanfeng had some bad habits and her methods were a bit unscrupulous, but she was quick-witted. Watching her handle things so deftly was quite satisfying.

At this point, the initial acts were over, and the plot was at a turning point.

Soon, Yang Wanfeng discovered that from this identity and perspective, her family was not as she remembered it. Everything she saw was shocking. Too many bloody stories had unfolded here in the fight for the family fortune.

—Every imaginable melodramatic element was packed in: scheming and seizing property, illicit affairs, angsty romance, switched-at-birth babies, a substitute for an idealized past love. These elements were absolutely timeless hot topics.

It even led to audience members needing three sheets of paper to draw out the relationship chart.

Because the acting was so realistic, the absorbed audience members couldn't help but gasp in shock:

"What! So the master didn't love her?"

"What! So he's not the real young master at all?"

"What! So the one who harmed Wanfeng was her..."

It turned out that the original Yang Wanfeng was not a true member of the Yang family at all, and even 'her' death had a hidden story.

The oppression Yang Wanfeng faced due to her identity grew stronger and stronger, reaching a point where her cleverness could no longer solve it, making her feel there was no escape.

Furthermore, after getting caught up in her current life, she felt as if she was overlapping with the roles of the ex-girlfriends and maids he had previously disregarded. Only then did she realize how shameless some of her previous thoughts had been.

His self-righteous thought, 'If I were poor, I could definitely make a different life for myself,' was completely contradicted by reality. It turned out that under the pressure of life, sometimes you have no choice at all.

Towards her new identity and new gender, Yang Wanfeng once again began to feel pain and resistance.

After this, she came to understand the tangled and hidden stories within this large family, saw the other side of everyone, and also saw her true self.

In the end, Yang Wanfeng naturally awakened, encouraged by her female compatriots, accepted herself, and brought all the stories to a close.

In the vast family, some members became decadent, some went mad, some committed suicide, and some shot others and became criminals—when a character fired a gun, a novel red beam of light shot out to represent the bullet. In the end, they all scattered, some happy, some sad. The final scene returned to the beginning, with new characters flashing past in the house, indicating that stories will forever be happening in this world.

As for Yang Wanfeng herself, she was all alone, having abandoned her old world and the lover who could not accept her, and left for a New World.

......

For the people of the time, this theme was very appealing. It also incorporated the novel element of transformation, and was filled with comedy, satisfying moments, and melodrama. The pacing was brisk, completely up to the commercial standards of a later era.

The intricate character relationships created one climax after another. The characters' banter and arguments were also used to naturally express the playwright's ideas.

Yang Wanfeng was initially played by a man, but after the soul swap, an actress took over. Her performance was excellent, perfectly capturing the mannerisms of a man in a woman's body, as if there truly was another soul inside her.

As for the sets and props that had amazed everyone at the beginning, they not only fit the plot perfectly at every turn but also possessed both realism and aesthetic beauty.

This aesthetic was consistent with Ji Shuangyu's usual style, also lacking complex mechanisms. Instead, the entire stage design served to enhance the plot and display time and space—only this time, he used realism instead of the Xieyi Style.

With every scene change, the audience found it hard to tell what was real and what was fake.

The woolen coats, pearl-embellished leather jackets, and sheepskin gloves worn by the actors were authentic and matched their character settings. Before this, when had there ever been dedicated costume design for the stage, where clothes perfectly fit the characters, customs, and climate?

The items displayed indoors, from small ones like snuff bottles and flower vases to large ones like wooden cabinets, tables, and chairs, were all lifelike and full of texture.

In the street scenes, the blackened chimneys, the signs with 'Chuan-Guang' style railings, the peddler's candy gong, and even the stacks of dried mule and horse dung fuel... all made one feel as if they were on the familiar streets of Jingcheng.

The familiar local color, the everyday language, and the props that were part of the acting—these alone made the audience believe the story and become immersed in it.

Qi Haoran even noticed some details: the warmth and coolness of the lighting, the wilting of the flowers in the courtyard—all changed along with the protagonist's state of mind, subtly enhancing the performance and the story.

Using scenery to express the mood, and lighting to speak for the actors!

What Qi Haoran savored even more was that the story was set against a backdrop familiar to everyone, making it incredibly immersive. It was unlike before, when they staged stories from Europe that were completely incomprehensible.

It was different from the modern-dress new plays that sometimes focused only on getting laughs, disregarding logic.

In this play, everything everyone said and did, every single move, was supported by logic. Even the water delivery man would intentionally have a slight, easy-to-understand Shandong accent—as most water deliverers in Jingcheng were from Shandong.

Their movements also interacted with the props; personal props shaped character, while decorative props defined the space... This interaction made the entire space more real, gave the performance more support, and thus made it more vivid, lifelike, and interesting.

Although they didn't give speeches this time, the ideas they wanted to instill were successfully conveyed into the ears and hearts of every audience member.

Even an uneducated viewer could appreciate the tangled grudges and also grasp the transformation in Yang Wanfeng's thinking after becoming a woman and experiencing everything that followed. She loudly condemned her family members for their rotten ideas, using vernacular that anyone could understand to refute things she herself had once said:

"If you say women are base creatures, then who in this world isn't born of a woman? I've never heard of the base giving birth to the noble. By that logic, you are a rank below me: a baseborn cur!"

"I at least still have the right to make my own voice heard! I will never again lie in a rotten coffin!"

The emotions were rich, somewhat like people you'd meet every day, yet with appropriate stage exaggeration, refining a slice-of-life performance for the stage.

The audience's emotions rose and fell with the plot. They clenched their fists, and at critical moments, they wished they could go up and land a few punches on her behalf, then praise her for a well-delivered curse.

—Lines like these were colloquial and easy to understand; they could be repeated after hearing them just once. And because of the dramatic conflict, they were firmly etched into their minds.

This kind of new play was something no one had encountered before, yet they found it wonderful and very easy to accept.

In the final scene, after saying her farewells, Yang Wanfeng departed alone on a minimalist stage, with the vast rivers and seas before her.

Once, shimmering jewels were a peerless beauty, and a lovely face was a peerless beauty. Now, the river at sunset is a peerless beauty, and a simple dress and a plain face are also a peerless beauty.

Slowly, the curtain fell.

Shu Wangyan, like the other audience members, took a long time to awaken from the plot.

Not a single word was written on the draft paper in his hand; he would probably get chewed out by his editor again. But he just couldn't tear his eyes away from the stage. As a not-so-serious drama critic, he had nitpicked plenty of times before, but this time, he was utterly speechless.

This was actually the work of Ji Shuangyu!

Half a minute later, a full house of applause erupted—a Western theater-going custom.

A moment later, Huaxia-style cheers were mixed in as well.