Nate and Caro took me out to see Monkey – Journey To The West at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden tonight in a great throwback to my childhood.

Monkey, or Monkey Magic as we always referred to it, was one my favourite shows as a kid though thinking back now the themes (monsters, evil, gluttony, lust etc) were a little bit more adult than I realised. It told the story of a motely crew of characters who are brought together by Buddha to help Tripitaka, a priest who has been tasked with undertaking a pilgrimage to fetch holy scriptures. The lead is Monkey, a monkey king who, having the ego the size of the planet, declares himself the equal of heaven takes it a step too far and is imprisoned by Buddha until released by Tripitaka, Pigsy who has been expelled from heaven for lust and gluttony and the crew is rounded out by Sandy, a water monster, who had some sort of other transgression that caused him to be expelled from heaven. There is also a dragon/horse who accompanies them.

So this show, Monkey – Journey To The West, is in essence a chinese opera/acrobatic/circus version of the classic chinese novel on which the tv show was based. It brings a collaboration too of the West (in the form of music by Blur frontman and Gorillaz collaborator Damon Albarn and visuals/costume/animations by Gorillaz collaborator Jamie Hewlett) and the East (in the form of writing and direction by Chen Shi-Zheng and Chinese singers/acrobats/martial artists.)

From a story-line perspective I’m not sure how much newcomers to the Monkey Magic story would have gotten out of it. The show is meant to be quite spiritual. I always remember each Monkey Magic episode having some sort of moral at the end. This doesn’t quite come across in the surtitles (the show is sung/spoken in Mandarin) and when translations came up on the surtitles a lot of what came was almost too deep and too philosophical (typically Chinese I guess) so didn’t make it at all easy to follow the story line.

Having said that if you sort of sat back and enjoyed the spectacle maybe it would have been enough. The show is quite a amazing and is right in your face with all the dazzling acrobatics, martial arts, contortionists and amazing set and costumers.

A truly enjoyable night and great to see something, if not ground-breaking, at least a little innovative and inventive.