What's on

The Phantom of the Opera

When: Dec 31, 7:15 pm

Where: Shanghai Oriental Art Center

The Phantom of the Opera is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Charles Hart. Richard Stilgoe and Lloyd Webber composed the musical together. Stilgoe also provided additional lyrics.

Based on the French novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, its central plot revolves around a beautiful soprano, Christine Daae, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, disfigured musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Paris Opera House.

As Christine's star rises, and a handsome suitor from her past enters the picture, the Phantom grows mad, terrorizing the opera house owners and company with his murderous ways. Still, Christine finds herself drawn to the mystery man.

The Cuban National Ballet will perform the dances.

Ghetto

When: Jan 4 and 5, 7:30 pm

Where: Shanxi Poly Grand Theater

Ghetto is a play by Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol about the experiences of Jews in the Vilna Ghetto during Nazi occupation in World War II.

It is inspired by an actual theater which operated in the ghetto from 1941 to 1943. It tells the story of the ghetto theater during the Lithuania occupation.

The theater responded to despair with song, satire and criticism of the Nazi regime, proving that theater can provide courage and hope even amid a time of atrocities.

Gu Wenchang

When: Feb 21-23, 7:30 pm

Where: National Center for the Performing Arts, Beijing

Gu Wenchang, by the National Theater of China, is about the life of Gu Wenchang, the first official who advocated the fight against desertification by planting trees since the 1950s.

Staying-up

When: Jan 21, 7:30 pm

Where: Changsha Meixihu International Culture and Art Center, Hunan province

The play narrates a story that occurs on the eve of Spring Festival. It is a tradition to stay up late or all night on the evening to welcome the first day of the Chinese New Year.

It focuses on the gathering of the family's three generations, including the grandmother, the mother and the daughter. The grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, confuses memories from the past and present. The fragments of her memory form a candid picture of the family down the years.

Ksenija Sidorova

When: Feb 16, 2:30 pm

Where: Guangzhou Opera House

Ksenija Sidorova is a genre-crossing player described as "the princess of the accordion".

The Latvian-born musician was encouraged to take up the instrument by her grandmother and continued her education in Britain, where she became a prizewinning undergraduate at the Royal Academy of Music.

Her debut album is an ambitious re-creation of Carmen for the accordion in 2016, incorporating Latin, Asian, European and North American musical styles, which is driven by her identification with French composer Georges Bizet's free-spirited femme fatale.

He Had Two Pistols with White and Black Eyes

When: Feb 18-22, 7:30 pm; Feb 22 and 23, 2:30 pm

Where: Beijing Citycomb Theater

Dario Fo (1926-2016) was an Italian actor-playwright, comedian, singer, theater director, stage designer, songwriter, painter and political campaigner of the Italian left-wing. He also won the 1997 Nobel Prize in literature. The Chinese version of Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist has become a signature work for avant-garde theater director Meng Jinghui. He Had Two Pistols with White and Black Eyes is Meng's second adaptation from the Italian playwright.

The play starts in a psychiatric institution, where a patient with amnesia is accused of desertion during war. However, a woman named Luisa comes to claim him as her lover, Giovanni, and brings him back home. But then the real Giovanni, a rogue and doppelganger to the patient, comes back from the battlefield and continues his life of crime－while scheming to blame his misdeeds on the amnesiac.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

When: March 12-15, 7:30 pm

Where: Beijing Poly Theater

Of all the works of William Shakespeare that have graced the theaters in China, Hamlet is arguably the most famous.

The latest version of the play, entitled The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, directed by Li Liuyi, will soon hit Beijing Poly Theater.

Veteran Chinese actors Hu Jun, Pu Cunxi and Lu Fang will play the leading roles.

Before The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Li directed the Chinese version of Shakespeare's King Lear.

The National Center for the Performing Arts has been working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, a theater organization based in the Bard's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, on the Shakespeare Folio Project. This aims to make the playwright's work more accessible to Chinese speakers.

Papa's Bed

When: March 17-29. 7:30 pm

Where: Tianjin Guanghua Theater

Never once do the father and the daughter in this performance truly meet each other. They only make phone calls, during which both talk, discuss, argue or resort to silence. The conversation always wanders around a theme that both seem to know, including the weather.

A husband who lost his wife. A daughter who lost her mother. Yet grief and sorrow could never reach the other side of the telephone wire. The father remarried three months after the mother's death. He has to put away old furniture and photos, because his partner wants new air in the space. On the contrary, the daughter's memories linger in the house.