Heard the one about the unfortunate soul who is visited by three ghosts? Of course you have. What about the one in which the three ghosts are paper, clay and light who overcome their host through a combination of martial arts and sorcery? Probably not.

Just one of over four hundred Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by the eighteenth century writer Pu Songling, whittled down to a lucky eight by the writing and directing duo of Pauline Lockhart and Ben Harrison, which makes for an absorbing ninety minutes of theatre and a refreshing alternative to panto by Grid Iron in a co-production with the Traverse.

Interspersed by a series of confessional chit-chats by the multi-cultured trio of Lockhart, Luna Dai and Robin Khor Yong Kuan whose reflections upon the source material and its themes root the action firmly in the here and now; and combining puppetry, illusion, video and kick-ass kung fu; you’re unlikely to find stranger tales than these. Not even in the racy biography of the Duke of Hazard aka Prince Andrew!

“Beware of any unexpected protuberances from your neighbour this evening,” says Lockhart in a tongue-in-cheek introduction to the opening tale Twenty Years a Dream in which a gentleman of taste and refinement falls for a beautiful ghost who for two decades has wandered the earth as “lonely as a goose without its flock.” But in order to win her heart and bring her back to life, he has to swap books for blades and defeat a bloodthirsty demon with teeth like Jaws.

Supernatural beings and monstrous creatures feature throughout, sometimes in animal form such as the male fox in Lotus Fragrance who along with a female spirit forms an unlikely love triangle with a clipped-voweled recluse. (Think Noel Coward on acid!) Moral of the story: you really can have too much of a good thing. Other lessons being: what goes around comes around; and much to the dismay of a Paisley-born headbanger, there are no shortcuts to understanding and knowledge.

Both cast and audience members are repeatedly asked whether they believe in ghosts or the afterlife. And though mortality and the supernatural are central themes, and though the tales are certainly strange, what they collectively lack is a spookiness – what the bookish gentleman says of the opening spirit “weird and ghosty” – which prevents a chill in the air from forming into a frosty depth.

That said, each of the eight tales are distinct in terms of character, plot and design. They grow stranger and more intriguing as the evening unfolds. And the stilted quality of the storytelling, together with the unique styles of the performers, elevates the action from realism to enchantment. What’s more, there’s a sprinkling of one-liners which not only raise a smile but on one occasion a small protuberance from a male admirer who in response to a request for “sperm and blood from a living person” replies, after a beat, “I can do that.”

Peter Callaghan
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