By For a long time, the Suzhou River (Suzhou Creek) only struck theater director, Wang Mengyue, as "filthy and stinking." Born and raised in Shanghai he had to pass by the waterway just about every day on his way to school.

"In the mornings, I saw the people who were living on the boats clustered on the river, brushing their teeth, facing the smelly river water, and when I was coming back from school in the late afternoon I saw them cooking on the same dirty water," Wang said.

"At the time, I was just confused about why they would want to live on a smelly river all the time. I wondered what stories they had to tell."

Decades later, in 2000, Wang found some answers to his curiosity about the stories of the people on and about the river, in the film Suzhou River which was written and directed by Lou Ye, a noted film director and a man who also grew up in Shanghai.

Made in a documentary style the film tells a tragic love story, mostly involving four young people who live alongside the river.

The theater adaptation of Suzhou River keeps an open ending for the audience.

The theater adaptation of Suzhou River keeps an open ending for the audience.

Memories spurred

"The film took me back to my childhood and spurred my memories of the river," Wang said, "There's a classic line in it - 'Suzhou River is the filthiest river, with an eternity's worth of stories and rubbish … if you watch it long enough, the river will show you everything.'"

A few months ago, Wang was working on a theatrical piece to be based on a love story set in Shanghai, when he thought of the film again. And now his new play, Suzhou River, the theatrical adaptation of Lou's film, will run at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre from March 27 to April 6.

He was enthusiastic about the setting believing that Shanghai already had many love stories set around Huaihai and Sinan roads, in the colorful longtangs and on the wide clean boulevards guarded by plane trees. But this was a love story that happened beside Suzhou River and showed another side of Shanghai, a chaotic and unprivileged Shanghai.

As well as director Lou's unique cinematography, which has been compared to Hitchcock's work, the film showed overseas audiences another side and a different mood of the city.

Wang's stage adaptation largely follows the film's plotline with a bungled kidnapping going awry when the heroine Moudan flees from her kidnapper lover and petty criminal, Mardar and leaps into Suzhou River to her apparent death. Mardar is sent to prison and on his release he begins to search for his love, not believing that she actually drowned in the river. He meets a dancer in a bar, Meimei who persuades him that she is in fact the missing Moudan.

The film ends tragically with the real lovers being reunited but plunging to their deaths in the river in a motorcycle accident. However, Wang is modifying the abrupt ending of his play - he said it probably wouldn't work for theater audiences.

"My adaptation ends with Mardar still searching for Moudan and the audience can decide whether he eventually finds her or not. I want to leave the audience with a little hope."

In the film, the star, Zhou Xun played both Moudan and Meimei but in the stage version while one actress plays both Moudan and Meimei, another actress also portrays different aspects of Meimei.

"I want to show the difference between the way Mardar sees Meimei and the way she is in real life," Wang explained. He believes that as Mardar searches for Moudan he is actually searching for a dream and not a real person.

"One of the themes of the film is the struggle between idealism and reality and the struggle between innocence and the outside world," Wang said.

Fu Yawen will be playing the conflicting roles of Moudan and Meimei in the play and she told the Global Times that taking on these two widely different characters in the same production was a major challenge.

A poster for the theater adaptation of Suzhou River Photos: Courtesy of Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre

Accepting reality

Fu believes the two characters are, in a way, just like herself but at different stages of life. "When I was in school, I think I was like Moudan, someone unwilling to accept reality and always wanting to chase my dreams. But when I grew up and began to work, I became much more like Meimei, who obviously has a more realistic and materialistic life although she still dreams about pursuing her true love."

Fu herself prefers the film ending which she found tragic but fittingly beautiful.

The design for this production leaves a lot to the audience's imagination - especially anyone who has seen the film. But there are still staging problems - how can they get a river onto a stage and how will they create a mermaid (in a scene in the film Meimei leaps into the dirty river and emerges as a clean and glamorous mermaid).

"We will have special effects but I can't tell you anything except that fans and ribbons will be helping create the illusions," Wang said. "Suzhou River is no longer the dirty stinking river it once was but its stories linger with us."

Ironically the film Suzhou River has never been released in China. Director Lou Ye incurred the displeasure of Chinese authorities after showing his film at the International Film Festival Rotterdam without permission.

Date: March 27 to April 6, 7:30 pm (except Monday)

Venue: Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre

上海话剧艺术中心

Address: 288 Anfu Road 安福路288号

Tickets: 150, 200 and 300 yuan

Call 6473-0123 for details