Director: Yi Tang
Composer: Ding Mingyu
Yi Tang brings The Face Within The Face to the Etcetera theatre, delivering a powerful afternoon of groundbreaking dance and innovation.
Chinese mask-wearing originally came about from travellers trying to prevent wild animals from attacking them at night, so the story goes. The bright, unnatural faces would help intimidate potential predators. It developed through religious practices and folklore into a well-respected art form in Chinese theatre and opera. Face-changing, or bian lian, is an evolution of this, developed through Sichuan opera. It involves the rapid changing of the mask to show sudden emotional shifts. The physics behind how the mask is changed mid-performance is often a closely guarded secret.
The Vakhtangov approach to acting involves attempting to define inner psychological truths through grand, often exaggerated external forms. The Face Within The Face attempts to blend the Sichuan face-changing system with Vakhtangov’s fantastic realism approach, blending two respected art forms from opposing cultures into one impressive display, all done in a small theatre above a pub in Camden. Only in London.
The show involves a dance and musical performance, a lecture by Oleg Mirochnikov on Vakhtangov and his mentor Stanislavski, then a live workshop while Mirochnikov and performer Zhijie Zhang attempt to merge the two art forms, a Q&A and finally a workshop on making the Sichuan opera masks. Over improvised music, drums and keys, Zhang leads the audience through an impressive display of dance and movement, donning an imperial-looking longpao robe and intricate headdress, changing the mask in a flash several times throughout the performance.
During the workshop part of the show, Mirochnikov, a senior lecturer at Central Saint Martins and artistic director of Belka Productions, leads performer Zhijie Zhang in a series of improvisational acting scenes, calling out commands while Zhang, donning various Sichuan masks, reacts to the prompts. This is presumably no easy task, but Zhang does well, from evoking Chinese legends such as Sun Wukong, to moving through a forest or running from a dragon, with apparent ease. The audience witnesses a wonderfully avant-garde performance.
The Face Within The Face is generally a bit of an all-over-the-place production; it starts late, and the sound technician’s phone goes off several times while connected to the speaker. People arrive throughout the performance, and the audience is fairly liberal in terms of phone use. That being said, it is a truly innovative, unique experience, showcasing rich Chinese tradition and well-respected Russian acting methods. It is safe to say there is nothing quite like it on or off the West End.
Reviewed on 26 April 2026
