The Stage

Master Chen Peisi with polished 20 years of classic drama as the foundation, successfully adapted into a film, the success of the film is very wonderful! It seems natural, so that people who have seen the play to see the film do not feel any abrupt or discord, exquisite attention to detail, The film everywhere overflow generation of old artists on the art of awe, respect!

Seriously, there is only one female character and they screwed it. How could it be that stereotypical?

The opera itself was pretty impressive but all those punchlines made me laugh zero times and the pace in the middle section failed completely that I nearly fell asleep.

My parents gave it quite a good rate but I just couldn't get it at all...

This seems to be quite a daring dark political satire and the Chinese audience lapped it up. Set in a theatre in Beijing during the formation of the republic of China, it uses a Peking opera troupe performing ' Farewell My Concubine' to lambast, sexual mores, government, political leaders and Chinese taste. It's also a classic farce of identity and misinformation. It is colourful, beautiful to look at and though sometimes the acting is quite broad and obvious, it matches the tone and works perfectly. It's setting of a theatre which is actually about 10 minutes from where I am living added to my delight. What was great was that at the end the audience started to applaud.

Xi Tai (The Stage) is a comedic movie that centers around a famous theater and famous actors being confronted with change when the revolution quite literally knocks down the door.

The movie is well produced with great customes and sets. Despite running two hours it feels much faster as there is constant frantic improving. All acting performances stand out as very good, and the jokes are clever.

I definitely recommend watching the 1993 film "farewell my concubine" first to give some context on the play!

This is a skillful scarcasm movie !

Set in a war-torn Republican-era city, The Stage follows an aging Peking opera troupe caught in the crossfire between art and power, survival and dignity. The film centres on Hou Xiting, the stubborn yet weary troupe leader of the Wu Qing troupe, who brings his company to the capital hoping to make a living by performing their masterpiece "Farewell My Concubine." What should have been a routine engagement at the Desheng Theatre quickly turns into a surreal nightmare when a newly victorious warlord, Marshal Hong, storms into the theatre with his soldiers and concubines, demanding to be entertained on his own terms.

A case of mistaken identity pulls an ordinary man into the chaos. Da Saor, a loud-voiced baozi delivery worker, is accidentally taken for the famous opera star Jin Xiaotian. Hong insists that this "master" must perform the role of Xiang Yu, the King of Chu, in Farewell My Concubine. The real Jin Xiaotian, proud and temperamental, refuses to risk his life, while the theatre manager and troupe members scramble to appease the marshal, calm the paying audience, and somehow keep the show going. Meanwhile, the refined dan actor Feng Xiaotong, who has dedicated his life to playing noble heroines like Yu Ji, is gradually pushed to the edge as he realises that his craft, his body, and his identity are all becoming tools for those in power.

On the surface, The Stage is a manic backstage farce: doors slam, people swap costumes, lies pile up, and the line between performance and reality becomes increasingly blurred. The first half of the film plays almost like a filmed stage play, with rapid-fire dialogue, overlapping arguments, and tightly choreographed blocking in cramped backstage rooms, corridors, and the wings of the theatre. But beneath the comedy lies a bitter core. Every joke is driven by fear: fear of being shot, fear of losing one's livelihood, and fear of being humiliated. The running gag that "the show must go on" gradually twists into a question: at what cost?

The main characters embody different responses to this central dilemma. Hou Xiting is the old-school professional who knows that "life is more important than theatre," yet cannot help trying to protect his troupe's dignity and the ancestral rules of the craft. He bows, pleads, and compromises, but he never quite abandons the idea that a troupe should have its own rule as known as its own code. His arc is not about heroic resistance, but about how much self-respect an artist can salvage while bargaining with brute force.

Da Saor, by contrast, is a pure everyman. He has no artistic training, no status, and no illusions. Dragged onto the stage under threat of death, he stumbles through the role of Xiang Yu, becomes the face of the performance for a night, and then is unceremoniously dropped back into anonymity. In one of the film's most quietly cruel ironies, the credits show him still delivering steamed buns later, as if nothing has changed. His brush with "stardom" is an accident, not a destiny; the system has no place for him beyond being a disposable stand-in.

Feng Xiaotong is the most tragic figure. As a dan actor, he has built his identity on the refinement, grace, and inner strength of heroines like Yu Ji. He takes the art and its rules seriously, perhaps more seriously than anyone else in the troupe. Watching Jin Xiaotian's pride crumble and seeing how easily the warlord can rewrite the ending of Farewell My Concubine - demanding that Xiang Yu must "cross the river" and live instead of dying by his own sword - Feng begins to understand that neither talent nor integrity can protect an artist when power treats art as a toy. When a new marshal later takes over the city and openly prefers keeping a pet dan actor as a private plaything, Feng realises that his future is not to be admired as Yu Ji, but to be owned. His final decision to remove his costume and walk into the river is a stark, wordless refusal: if he cannot live as a dignified performer, he would rather not live at all. In that sense, he dies so that his idea of a "clean" theatre can remain unpolluted, even if only in his own mind.

Marshal Hong is not just a villain; he is a personification of arbitrary power. He half-understands the story of Farewell My Concubine and warps it to soothe his own ego. The question "Why doesn't he cross the river?" is not really about Xiang Yu at all, but about Hong's inability to accept a narrative in which the powerful lose, die, or admit defeat. By forcing the troupe to change the ending-turning a tragic defeat into an improbable escape and future comeback-he asserts his right to rewrite not only a story, but the idea of heroism itself. Whoever controls the ending, the film suggests, controls what people are allowed to believe about failure and mortality.

Thematically, The Stage is rich. It operates as a story about artists in a warlord era, but also as a broader allegory about how power structures shape culture. The repeated replacements of one marshal by another-red, then yellow, then blue-emphasise that individuals come and go, but the hierarchy stays. For ordinary people, the faces at the top change; the rules they impose remain. The troupe's internal talk about rules and lineages, about how this aria should be sung or that role should be played, becomes almost pitiful when a single command from the marshal can erase all of it. At the same time, the film does not idealise artists. Jin Xiaotian is vain and cowardly, the manager is opportunistic, and even Hou Xiting has his compromises. The Stage does not present "art" as pure good and "power" as pure evil; it shows a messy ecosystem of fear, vanity, survival, and small acts of stubbornness.

Visually and stylistically, the film leans heavily into its theatrical origins. Much of the action is confined to the theatre building; you rarely see the outside world except in fragments. This claustrophobia serves the story well, reinforcing the sense that the characters are trapped inside a pressure cooker. The blocking is careful: bodies constantly cross the frame, doors open and close, characters slide between backstage and onstage, mirroring their moral and emotional shifts. The colour design is suggestive, with the changing warlords associated with different tones and uniforms, hinting at political turnover without it ever being fully explained. At the same time, this strong stage flavour is a double-edged sword. For viewers who expect more dynamic location work and varied visual language, the film can feel like a proscenium play captured by cameras rather than a fully cinematic transformation of the material.

As for strengths, the most obvious is the acting ensemble. The lead actor as Hou Xiting balances clowning and quiet pain, making the character both ridiculous and dignified. The performer playing Da Saor nails the blend of panic, naivety, and reluctant bravery that makes the character so relatable. Feng Xiaotong's actor carries a complex inner life in small gestures, and his final walk to the river lingers in the mind long after the credits. The dialogue crackles with energy, the humour is often genuinely funny, and when the film turns serious, the weight feels earned rather than forced.

The script's thematic ambition is also a major asset. It dares to ask what happens when stories are no longer told by storytellers but by those who own the guns, money, and venues. It links personal trauma, like Hong's haunted memory of a failed river crossing, with the larger tendency of power to erase uncomfortable endings. It gives each character a distinct relationship to compromise and to self-respect.

However, the film is not without weaknesses. The very stage-like qualities that give it intensity may alienate some viewers. The reliance on enclosed spaces and dialogue-driven scenes can make it feel visually repetitive. The pacing, especially in the latter half, may seem drawn-out; arguments and pleading scenes sometimes circle around the same points, which can dilute their impact. The tonal shift from chaotic comedy to grim tragedy, while thematically justified, is abrupt enough that some audiences might feel whiplash. For those who come expecting a light comedy, the bleakness of the final movements, particularly Feng's suicide, may feel heavier than advertised.

From a neutral standpoint, The Stage stands as a thoughtful, sometimes uncomfortable blend of farce and fable. It is neither a flawless masterpiece nor a disposable curiosity. Its greatest successes lie in how it turns a single theatre into a microcosm of a whole society, and how it shows that sometimes the most important battles are not about winning, but about how you choose to lose. Its flaws are largely formal and structural rather than conceptual, rooted in the difficulty of translating a celebrated stage work into a fully cinematic experience.

In the end, The Stage is a film about people forced to perform roles they did not choose, under directors they cannot refuse. Some, like Da Saor, return to their ordinary lives with nothing but a story to tell. Some, like Hou Xiting, keep negotiating, sacrificing pieces of pride while trying to keep the troupe alive. And some, like Feng Xiaotong, decide that the only way to keep their inner stage clean is to step off it forever. Whether one loves or dislikes the film's style, it is hard to deny that it leaves behind more than a few lines, images, and questions that stay with you after the curtain falls.