Art beat in November

World-class heartbeat

Love Riverdance? Now the producer and director of Riverdance presents the new production Heartbeat of Home, a spectacular show featuring the vibrant, dynamic components of traditional Irish, Latin and Afro-Cuban music and dance. The show comprises some 40 terrific world-class dancers and a 10-piece band, creating a new and electrifying music written by award-winning Golden Globe-nominated composer Brian Byrne. It premiered in Dublin on Oct 2 and their Asian debut is in China, with only two shows in Beijing. The show will travel to Shanghai from Dec 6 to 9.

7:30 pm, Nov 29, 30. 56 Zhongguancun Nandajie Street. 010-5166-3200, 400-610-3721.

Second time around

Meng Jinghui (pictured right), China's leading avant-garde theater director, staged Soviet poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1928 satire, The Bedbug, in Beijing and received wide acclaim for using a live rock band on stage. Some 13 years later, the veteran director joins hands with band member Jiang Tao to restage the production. The Bedbug deals with a worker, Prisypkin, who proclaims that he has paid a high enough price for revolution and a new society, and now seeks to advance himself and work his way up the social ladder. He touts a guitar, exchanges his work overalls for fashionable clothes, drinks and pursues the good life. He plans to marry the daughter of a petty-bourgeois hairdresser. In the course of the alcohol-laced wedding celebrations, a fire breaks out. Everyone dies in the fire except Prisypkin, who takes refuge in a cellar and survives. But as the cellar fills with water, Prisypkin is encased in a block of ice. Fifty years later in a future socialist society he is revived from the ice by white-coated, antiseptic scientists, who inform him of his second chance of life.

The rock band is not the selling point this time, instead, the new production will have an open section that invites viewers to go onto the stage to discuss and perform the possible ending.

7:30 pm, until Dec 1, The Comb Theater, 3 Xinzhongjie Street, Dongzhimen, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-8404-9981.

British farce in China

The Chinese production of British farce Noises Off is to be staged. Created by Michael Frayn, it's a play within a play, about a theater group staging a farce. The play earned Tony Award nominations in the 1980s when it was staged on Broadway. In 2011-12, it had a successful revival in London. The Chinese production will feature Tian Shui, He Ping and Ding Meiting.

7:30 pm, Tue-Sat, Nov 15-Dec 8, 2 pm, Sat, Sun. Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, 1F, 288 Anfu Road, Shanghai. 021-6473-0123.

Crosstalk for young and old

Comedian Gao Xiaopan, together with his team from Hip Hop Crosstalk Club, which he founded five years ago, will give a show in Beijing, kicking off the annual xiang sheng gala organized by China National Radio. With six crosstalk (or xiang sheng) performances throughout November and December, established masters, including Li Jindou, Jiang Kun and Feng Gong, will gather onstage, along with young rising comedians.

Nov 15 to Dec 21. Hip Hop Crosstalk Club, Guangmingge Theater, No 61, Gulouxidajie, Xicheng district, Beijing. 400-610-3721.