Shakespeare gets a Chinese makeover

"Shakespeare is every director's must-do. I directed scenes from Othello and Hamlet when I studied at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. But the older I got, the more I was unsure about directing Shakespeare. I felt I was not ready until I developed my unique approach and understanding of the story," Wang says.

"When the Globe Theater invited me to do a play as a representative of Chinese theater, I felt it an opportunity to do a totally Chinese edition for a global audience."

The Globe Theater first wanted him to do Henry V. But Wang says he loves the Bard's tragedies, so he proposed to do either Macbeth, Richard III or Antony and Cleopatra.

Wang moves the story of British royalty to a Chinese palace but the personality of each character remains unchanged and the idea of fate is maintained.

"Shakespeare's hilarious horror-show of power and paranoia is timeless and universal and that's what I want to interpret in this Chinese adaption," says Wang.

To highlight the Chinese characteristics, Wang uses one table and two chairs which are unique props in the Peking Opera. Lady Anne is performed by a Peking Opera actress with a costume and performance styled on Peking Opera. A live band playing traditional Chinese percussion instruments accompanies the performance.

Some characters wear wooden full-face masks from nuoxi, a thousand-year-old opera popular in Southern China.

The back curtain features Chinese artist Xu Bing's "square-word calligraphy".

Xu devised a method of writing English words in rectangular arrangements that resemble Chinese characters. On the back curtain, you can see Xu's writing of such English words as "war", "desire", "destroy", "nightmare" and "curse" in Chinese-style calligraphy.