We walked to our seats at a table in the theater, entering under a large balcony and passing by tables set with beautiful red cloths and fine china. The fixtures were marble and richly painted; the curtain across the large stage in the front of the theater a deep red that matched the tablecloths. If Versailles were a theater, it wouldn’t be much less opulent than this.

As we walked, we started noticing a few odd things. Though we’re in our 30s, we seemed to be (by far) the youngest people there. Then we realized that although the theater was nearly full, there were almost no Chinese people there. Finally, we looked more closely at the table. Were those forks at the place settings? Then I took a good look at the dinner people were eating: steaks or roasted chicken, green beans and an aluminum foil-wrapped baked potato! "Why did these people come to China," I thought to myself, "if they aren’t going to eat the food?" (we’d just come from a huge dinner of about 100 dumplings between 2 of us, so maybe I shouldn't talk about other people's dinner, though). We looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and the thought that was flashing between us was "what have we gotten ourselves into?"

We were joined shortly by a classmate and his wife and soon thereafter, the theater went dark and a booming voice began (in English) to set the scene. I turned to look at our classmate’s wife; her eyes were dancing in merriment, her hand already covering her mouth to stifle her giggling.

The show seemed so incredibly staged that we couldn’t take it seriously. The shame is that perhaps the dances and music were genuine and the costumes absolutely historically correct. But the entire effect was so gaudy, the announcements so loud and pompous, with the whole production intended to present an image of the Tang dynasty court that matched what the predominantly American and European senior citizens in the audience thought it should be, that we just couldn’t stop laughing; my stomach ached by the time we left.

I can’t recommend this for anything other than some comic relief. In fairness, though, there is another review of the show here on IGOUGO that was positive.