People

By Guy D. Garcia

There is big trouble in Peking City these days, but even the party faithful are laughing and applauding at the Tianqiao (Heavenly Bridge) Theater. Reason: these capitalist roaders are stepping out on a new stretch of that irresistibly American thoroughfare known as the Great White Way. Since March, ten Americans, led by Director George White of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn., have been working with 100 Chinese to stage the first American musicals ever seen in the country, The Music Man and The Fantasticks. For Music Man, which just opened, the Chinese took special pains to re-create the show-biz pomp and color of the original 1957 production, though the cultural leap did take some effort from both sides of the footlights. Chinese Opera Star Wang Xingna confesses that before playing Harold Hill he disliked American musicals. "Now I find they have merits," allows Wang. "I think the audience will like them, just as they like pop songs." Fine. But how does "P and that stands for pool" sound in Mandarin?