Tsao Yu

Thunderstorm Tsao Yu

Thunderstorm, a four-act play by Tsao Yu, one of China's leading playwrights, has held the stage since it was produced in 1933. Its wide human appeal has drawn audiences from every walk of life all over China and it has even been made into a folk-opera.

Here, for the first time, is an adequate English translation.

The setting is the home of an industrialist in north China, where a family has come together with the inexorable fatality of a Greek drama. It is a play of tensions, and, in the twenty-four hours in which the action takes place, we watch these tensions mount and tauten as the tragic climax swiftly approached.

Here, in miniature, we witness the disintegration of the fabric of the old society and the birth-pangs of the new. The head of the house, a self-made man whose preoccupation with success has made him in sensible to the ties of blood and affection, still bears within him the stifling weight of the old feudal society. The younger generation are in rebellion against the decaying order which the older generation stand for, and the intensity of their reaction reveals new facets in the dramatic situation.

The play is an accomplished example of the Western form of drama in China. The emotional conflicts and stresses which Tsao Yu handles with such finesse are skillfully interwoven and counterpoised in such a way that suspense is sustained to the final curtain.

We are confident that English speaking readers will accord this play the welcome that one of the classics of twentieth-century drama deserves.