Monkey - Journey to the West Tickets

The O2 Arena will have a special theatre built known as Monkey’s World this winter as Monkey – Journey To The West tells the 400 year old tale in the nation’s capital city. Combining the work of Chinese actor and director Chen Shi-Zheng with Gorillaz founders Damon Albarn (of Blur fame) and artist Jamie Hewlett, this production should be a treat for all. After monkey featured heavily in the promotional material for 2008’s Beijing Olympics and also featured in a production at London’s Royal Opera House in July, expect a special evening as this spectacle unfolds in front of your eyes.

At the start of Monkey – Journey To The West, our headstrong and mythical hero is born after hatching from a stone egg. Monkey seeks immortality and ventures to the Mountain of Heart and Mind to seek a teacher, who takes the form of Subodhi. He continues his quest but eventually comes at odds with the Queen Mother of Heaven as he crashes her birthday banquet, eats her magical peaches and fights her devine guests. She calls on Buddha to deal with him who gives him a task to complete to redeem himself. So the story follows him as he travels on an epic journey to India along with the young monk Tripitaka hoping to return to China the Holy Scriptures. This deeply serious play is based on the 16th century novel Journey To The West by Wu Cheng’en, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature.

The show fuses a world of singing, dancing, acrobatics, animation and video projections to bring this mythical world to life, all of which has been made possible by Damon Albarn, Jamie Hewlett and Chen Shi-zheng. Albarn is best known for fronting the Britpop band of the 90s Blur. Since then he has joined forces with Jamie Hewlett, the acclaimed artist behind the likes of Tank Girl to bring Gorillaz to audiences around the world. The both of them bring Monkey – Journey To The West to the stage with guidance of actor and director Chen Shi-Zheng who is behind Chinese theatre productions and the movie Dark Matter (2007) with Meryl Streep. Their collaborative effort produced this spectacle that had its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival in June 2007 and has had great success since.

The ‘circus opera’ as it has been dubbed, Monkey - Journey To The West appears at the O2 Arena until the Sunday 4th January 2009.