The stage adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ will run in Shenzhen, China, before heading to Shanghai and Beijing.
Once banned in China, Stephen King’s “The Shawshank Redemption” had its much-anticipated debut as a stage play in the country’s tech capital Shenzhen on Jan. 4. Adding to its unusual status, the play is performed in Chinese by a cast of Western actors who are based in the Middle Kingdom.
Based on King’s novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” the 1994 Frank Darabont-directed film adaptation “The Shawshank Redemption,” starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, became one of the most iconic and enduring movies for millions of viewers around the world. Thirty years later, it still regularly appears on lists of most popular films. Complete with corrupt prison officers and a cunning jail break, the story closely observes a friendship and the fears of inmates who are being held in the Shawshank State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison.
The picture has had a bumpy history in China. While the original was made at a time when China had few modern cinemas and was importing minimal numbers of Hollywood films, it was later given prominence and played as the closing title of the 2005 edition of the Shanghai International Film Festival. But, following the real-world escape from house arrest by blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng and the U.
