Musicals No Walk In Park

SCS, which opened in 2011, is actually dedicated to presenting musicals. Although Fei has had some success in getting younger Chinese interested in the form, there is still the matter of cost, as he tells the Guardian in a recent interview.

Musicals, even those produced by Chinese companies, are expensive, and there just isn’t that much disposable income to go around.

Fei is excited about the official Asia Pacific touring company of “The Phantom of the Opera” coming to his venue in December.

It’s been 10 years since the popular musical has been staged in China.

With the play already popular in Shanghai, he’ll put on 60 performances. It may sound like a lot but, as he points out to the Guardian, the runs for the musical in Japan and South Korea are longer.

The main problem is that the audience for musicals, young people, who are more willing to try new things than their parents, don’t earn enough money to spend on them.

The minimum ticket price at SCS for a full-scale musical is 25 yuan ($4), which is a lot for a demographic whose average annual income is about 29,000 yuan ($4,700).

The situation is even worse outside of Shanghai, and not just because the wages are lower. Most people in what he calls “second-tier cities” don’t even know what a musical is.

Without the promise of a run longer than a few performances, it isn’t worth most touring companies’ while to leave Shanghai and Beijing.

While the SCS itself received state support when it was being built, there are no tax breaks for “culture” in China.

Theaters are considered by the government “the same as any other commercial organization,” he told the Guardian.

There’s also the question of quality. If foreign productions are too pricey, audiences have shown they are willing to attend local productions.

There have been successful Mandarin-language stagings of “Cats” and “Mamma Mia!” in recent years.

One group is working on a production of “Avenue Q,” but Fei admits that talent still has a way to go.

The sets and other production design elements can match Western standards, but not the singing, mainly because the teaching of musical performance technique is still in its infancy.

And then there’s censorship. Ironically “Les Miserables” was warmly accepted by the authorities when it played in China in 2002 because the novel has always been popular in China.

But Fei points out that “Miss Saigon” would be very difficult to put on.