Chinese Fireworks

The Foo Hsing Theater is a forceful reminder that Broadway starves the senses. Performing centuries-old classics. The Beautiful Bait and The White Snake, this Chinese theater troupe refreshes the eye by splashing the stage with color. It fills the air with exotic sounds. It galvanizes the playgoer physically with the grace and discipline of bodily action.

The Beautiful Bait is the superior play and seems like a foray into the enchanted realm of a child's dream. It is acted by wondrously well-trained youngsters, none older than 17. The plot: a wicked prime minister, Tung Cho, tries to overthrow a royal dynasty. A loyal statesman dangles a beautiful girl (Wang Fu-jung) as bait before Tung Cho and his general, Li-Pu.

The general turns against Tung Cho, gets the girl and saves the dynasty.

The working-out of the story has the melodramatic naivete of an early silent film, but the stage skills of the cast speak a universal language. Masked and bearded for their roles, the actors show their youth only in their piping voices. They are prodigious acrobats. Li-Pu's groom does not scale an enemy wall; he vaults over it with a somersault. The soldiers' duels mate the formality of ballet with the split-second timing of a trapeze act. Girls make ribbons of cloth hiss, curl and swirl through the air like rainbow-colored py thons. The evening's most exquisite miming re-creates a boat trip upriver. Using only two paddles as props, the players sway and dip with uncannily precise imprecision, lyrically evoking a sampan bobbing on the water.

All the while, a small side-stage group of instrumentalists brews a weird and furious counterpoint of sound. The drum mer underscores and paces the action with the charged beat of an Oriental Gene Krupa. After its two-week stay in Manhattan, the Foo Hsing Theater, which has toured the U.S. from coast to coast and toast to toast, opens in Mexico City.

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