14 書香人物 P E R S O N A L I T Y & B O O K S SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES

[ HARDCOVER: U s ] SUNDAY PROFILE A recovering Maoist’s road to Here she goes again

redemption Catherine Johnson wrote ‘Mamma Mia!’ Now she’s back — with another story about a wedding In 1970s China, Jan Wong snitched on her By Lyn Gardner classmate, who was then exiled. Now, , Bristol, England haunted by guilt, she seeks to make amends

By MICHAEL KENNEY NY times news service, Boston

In China, by the early 1970s, the worst excesses of the Cultural atherine Johnson is continuously producing theater Revolution were over, the Tianan- downing an energy drink in jeopardy (the main theater men protests and the military C that promises to provide remains closed, awaiting major crackdown well in the future. “energy, stamina, focus and drive.” redevelopment). And for Jan Wong (黃明珍), But does she really need any “I was really emotional about a 19-year-old Canadian college more? The playwright based in it,” she says, “so when [board student of Chinese descent, Bristol, southwest England, went chairman] Dick Penny asked if I’d who had come on a summer’s from being a tearaway teenager, write a play for the theater, I said visa, had stayed on to study expelled from school after a ‘yes.’ I was walking back over at Beijing University, and had stand-off with the headmaster Clifton suspension bridge after joined student work teams at over a revealing top, to the author meeting with him, and the play a machine tool factory and on of Mamma Mia!, one of the most just popped into my head. From a dust-blown farm, China was successful musicals ever. Johnson the bridge, you can see the Avon “radical-chic,” and “Maoism was also wrote the screenplay for the Gorge hotel, which is a popular mesmerizing.” film version, which became the venue for weddings; and I In her 1996 memoir, Red highest-grossing British movie of remembered that there had been China Blues, Wong described all time. a protest by aggrieved divorced her experiences from those years It’s a career trajectory most dads on the bridge. Somehow as like “living inside a real-life writers could only dream of. the two came together. I wrote it propaganda movie.” A COMRADE LOST AND FOUND: Yet Johnson, 51, with a glossy, quickly — as if I had a rocket up Buried in the memoir was A Beijing Story chestnut bob and a warm, open my ass.” an incident that had occurred manner, says she still sometimes The success of Mamma at Beijing University. Another By Jan Wong gets out of bed feeling like a Mia! may have brought Johnson student, Yin Luoyi, had confided 322 pages failure. “Every time I start a new financial security, but she still to Wong and a Chinese-American work, I feel a complete lack of has her feet firmly on the ground. classmate that she wanted to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt confidence,” she says. “It must She admits to lying in the bath go to America, and asked their be because I’ve had less years fantasizing about being whisked help. “We decided,” Wong wrote, of being a success than I had of away to Los Angeles to be a “[that] Yin did need help” and being a failure. For a lot of my feted screenwriter, but believes “the Communist Party would her long-ago adversaries like the life, I felt a complete letdown.” that staying in Bristol and fitting save her from herself.” So they hard-line disciplinarian whom Johnson left school with little writing in around raising her “snitched,” turning her in to the she knew as “Fu the Enforcer.” to sustain her but poor exam children has had a beneficial Foreign Students Office. “We Perhaps, Wong thinks, “the results and a love of writing that effect on her work. “Of course, it actually thought we were doing landscape of her memory is had been encouraged by weekly has its downsides,” she says. “I’d the right thing,” Wong wrote. littered with bodies,” and, after visits, with her father, to the like to be the one to write the big But the incident, so matter- all, “snitching in Chairman Mao’s Bristol Old Vic theater. For years, play about the recession, but the of-factly recounted in Red China China was routine and easily it seemed that success as a writer truth is I’m much more interested Blues — and, more importantly, forgotten.” was beyond her grasp. “Writing in everyday life, by the way we what its outcome had been for Then, with time running was the only thing I was good at,” all just get by.” Yin — haunted Wong for 30 out before Wong and her she says, “but I also wanted to Johnson still seems genuinely years. In A Comrade Lost and family must return home, the hang out with the bad boys. I had astonished by her good fortune, Found she returns to that story. connections came through, and a good few years when I ran away as if she had nothing to do with Returning from China in the Yin called. from things and sometimes life ran the success of Mamma Mia! early 1980s, Wong worked as There is a happy reunion, away from me.” An early marriage Even now, she says she would a journalist, including a stint and over several days Yin ended in divorce; when another never have been the first choice as a business reporter at the describes her road from exile in relationship broke up, she found to write the screenplay if her Boston Globe. Later, as the the Manchurian oilfields back herself a single mother in her 30s, contract had not demanded that Toronto Globe and Mail’s China to a privileged life in Beijing, barely able to afford nappies. she get a shot at it, and that she correspondent, she covered the reinventing herself several times She was considering training would almost certainly have been Tiananmen protests. along the way as an officer in to be a probation officer when sacked if producer Judy Craymer Then, in 2006, with her the People’s Liberation Army, another trip to the Bristol Old Vic hadn’t stood by her. Right to husband, a Canadian whom she a law school professor, then as — to see Jim Cartwright’s 1980s the bitter end, it was a fight had met and married in Beijing, a businesswoman, even briefly play Road, about northern English with the studio to defend her and their two teenage sons, working in New York. Her life, working-class life — changed her and Craymer’s vision of a movie Wong returned again to China. Wong reflects, “had been one life. “I suddenly realized I could about “real older women who It was time, she writes, “to find high-stakes gamble.” write about people like me, living are overweight, over-stressed, Yin, apologize and try to make Yin invites Wong to her real, messy lives,” says Johnson. drunk and needing each other.” amends.” high-rise condo — one of five She rushed home and, within two She fought hard for the movie’s It is a quest, like that in Red residences that she and her weeks, had written Rag Doll, a ending, in which all the cast China Blues, both intensely husband own. Tiantongyuan (天 play about child abuse in a local return for one last exuberant personal and at the same time 通苑) had been the site of a labor family. It won an award and went number. The studio felt this one that delves into the conflicted camp for class enemies. But on to be a success at ’s was “cheesy wotsits with knobs history and culture of China. its name, then and now, means Bush theater. Other successes at on” that would only be seen by The chances of finding Yin “straight to heaven,” prompting the Bush followed. Then, in 1997, cleaners sweeping up popcorn. in a city and society so changed Wong to reflect that Yin herself the playwright and director Terry How wrong they were. were not good. For the city, the “has gone straight to heaven.” Johnson, her sometime mentor, “Going to the red carpet structure of the ancient capital, As for Wong, she wonders heard about a proposed musical premiere was fun,” she says, especially the narrow, crooked “what the revolution was all based around the songs of Abba “but on those kinds of occasion, residential hutongs, was fast about.” She had judged Yin — and recommended Johnson you’re always thinking your disappearing. when she had talked of going to the show’s producer, Judy frock is too tight or your shoes As for the personal quest, to the US, and now was judging Craymer. Mamma Mia! was born. pinch. Seeing it in the place Wong falls back on networking her because of her success. Now Johnson’s back where Above from left: Actresses , and Christine Baranski in a scene from the film Mamma Mia! where I grew up was much more — itself not that easy in a city “Even at this late date,” she it all started — at the Bristol Top: The creative team behind Mamma Mia!, from left, Catherine Johnson, and Judy Craymer. PHOTOs: Reuters and NY Times News Service fun. Everyone fantasizes about where a person is likely to writes, “I still need remedial Old Vic’s studio space, with a returning in a Rolls-Royce to the change phone numbers seven help to recover from Maoism. new play, Suspension, about a without the presence of her who’ve seen Mamma Mia!. But she was hit hard by the sudden place that they left in failure. times in a decade. Come to think of it, writing this girl who is about to get married father, with whom she has never Suspension is rooted firmly in closure of the Bristol Old Vic in Well, seeing Mamma Mia! at a She finds an old roommate, book is tantamount to a Maoist wondering if her special day had any contact. The plot will Bristol, where Johnson has lived summer 2007 — an act that put small local cinema was my Rolls- and then other classmates, even self-criticism.” can possibly be complete sound familiar to the millions all her adult life. Like many there, the future of the UK’s longest Royce moment.”

[ PAPERBACK: U S ] Who better than Joan Rivers to dish out plastic surgery advice? The comedienne’s hymn to artificial youth may leave a nasty taste in readers’ mouths — especially since she mocks other stars who have gone under the knife by Carole Cadwalladr perform a vulva lipoplasty, or Wax Figure.” She’s evangelical about plastic advice on plastic surgery is take my word for it. Decide for The guardian, london how you shave a dorsal hump She’s pleased with her own surgery, a true convert. “I’ve roughly the equivalent of yourself: “Put a blond wig on a Nazi jokes are part of Joan (by scraping the excess cartilage work, though. She’s an entirely always said, ‘If everyone around listening to George Best on parking meter and some man will Rivers’ stock-in trade. Last year, on the septum with a scalpel and wrinkle-free 75 and helpfully the world got a nose job and lost alcohol. It’s the answer to offer to buy it a drink.” Funny? for example, she compared Heidi then using a chisel and a mallet to runs through her “procedures”: 20 pounds (9kg), there’d be no everything. It cures all ills. It’s The most depressing aspect Klum to Hitler (it was something hammer away the nasal bone), I she had her nose thinned while wars.’” the American Dream made flesh. of all of this is that she’s to do with a frock). Hilarious! found myself having strange and still at college, the bags under But there’s no mention “Which would you rather have?” probably right. “Being old is like So here’s one for her. Should the violent thoughts. her eyes done when in her of the fact that she used she asks rhetorically. “Sagging, wearing Harry Potter’s cloak of worst happen, and the economic But first things first. A wise 30s and her first full facelift to have bulimia, that she’s scar-free breast or nice, perky invisibility, all the time. A good downturn lead to the rise of far- man once told me that the in 1975, in her early 40s, “a suffered throughout her life breasts with some scars that will way to tear it off is an eyelift.” right parties across Europe and worst refuge of the journalistic truly major turning point in my from depression and that her fade over time? (Answer? No If Joan Rivers looked 75, would the re-emergence of the kind of scoundrel is to criticize someone life and looks.” Next up was overcommitment to plastic man will ever try to cop a feel she be on TV? Probably not. Is tactics last seen on Kristallnacht, for the way they look. But there’s liposuction on her thighs, then surgery might in some way be around your ankle).” Or what there any woman who looks I will personally offer to burn no point in beating around the a breast reduction and a tummy connected to the fact that she about a facelift? “You’ll have 75 who appears on TV? If you this book. bush: there’s a conceptual flaw tuck. She’s had her under chin was having liposuction when a feeling of rebirth, of second think the mass mutilation of No, really, Joan, it would be at the heart of this book, namely, “cleaned up three times,” an her husband committed suicide. chances and new beginnings.” an entire generation of women my pleasure. It’s not that Men do you really want to take plastic upper eyelid lift and “every six Nor is there any hint that her She will admit there are risks, is the answer to this particular Are Stupid ... And They Like surgery advice from Joan Rivers? months or so, I go in for my Men Are Stupid ... And They Like rationale for her latest surgery though — just the small matters problem, don’t hold back. And Big Boobs: A Woman’s Guide to Joan feels no such Botox cosmetic shots, collagen in Big Boobs: A Woman’s Guide to — “What drives me to have both of “death, disfigurement, nerve why stop with the breasts? Beauty Through Plastic Surgery compunction, laying into Melanie my lips, and if I have something Beauty Through Plastic Surgery my legs and my arms attended damage, bruising, bleeding, David Matlock, a board-certified is poorly written, desperately Griffiths’s face, Meg Ryan’s lips, to burn off, a mark or spot, I do by Joan Rivers to is the beauty ideal of the long, infection, pain, numbness and gynecological surgeon, agrees unfunny and has a stupid title Robert Redford’s brow and it. I’ve also had a chemical peel ... lean-limbed woman” — would scarring.” with Rivers: “Men do like big (though it is all those things). It’s Priscilla Presley’s entire body: the only procedure that has ever 304 pages be considered unhealthy in a Of course, a zillion people will boobs ... but they also like a tight that after reading how a micro- “Did you see her on Dancing been painful. 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