World Premiere
Imagine the characters from a classic film noir - flawed private eye, femme fatale and underground crime lord - meet the superhuman heroines of a Hong Kong Wuxia sword-fighting spectacular.
Set the action in the Chinatown of a futuristic Australian city and bring in multi-media landscapes, acrobatics, parkour, trampoline, dance, circus and martial arts, and you might have something close to the on-stage spectacle of Stalker's Shanghai Lady Killer.
The plot follows an Australian detective, hired to track down a mysterious female Chinese assassin. Her mission is to kill the Mayor, a successful and popular migrant from Shanghai who is in the midst of his re-election campaign. A dark secret looms over the action, threatening to tear the city apart.
Popularised by the Shaw Brothers studios in the 1960s and revisited in Kill Bill and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - the Wuxia genre is the main inspiration for this contemporary Australian stage production.
Written by Australian filmmaker Tony Ayres and directed by Stalker's Rachael Swain with associate director Roger Hodgman, the production features one of China's leading martial arts film stars, Wang Fei in the lead role of Lili.
Stalker's Shanghai Lady Killer features an original musical score by lain Grandage, design by Stephen Curtis and lighting design by Damien Cooper. The choreography has been produced by Gavin Webber and Wu Shu Master, Alice Dong Pei which is complemented with spectacular stunts by Australia's leading wire stunt director Keir Beck.
"The Australian Stalker theatre group achieve the near impossible - they create avant-garde plays that sell out... sell out crowds abroad already acknowledge them as the world's most exciting visual and physical theatre company."
The Times (UK)
Brisbane Festival 2010 in association with Melbourne International Arts Festival