The Wilderness is a Beijing Opera adapted by Li Bao-chun from a famous play of the same name by Cao Yu. This is the first time that Cao Yu’s play has been staged as a Beijing Opera. Professor Tian Ben-xiang, an expert of modern plays, was hired as a counselor when the opera was first produced, and Xie Jin, a famous Chinese director and Cao Yu’s student, was invited to direct the opera. Li Bao-chun and Huang Yu-lin, the “Little Queen of Beijing Opera in Taiwan”, took on the leading roles.

According to Gu Huai-qun’s analysis, the opera was obviously influenced by Alexandre Dumas and Eugene Onegin. The Count of Monte Cristo and Emperor Jones served as models, while the characters of Wuthering Heights serve as parallels to portray the love and hate relationships of a group of poor men and women from a small town.

In the original play by Cao Yu, Qiu Hu, a strong-willed man, escaped from prison to seek out the Jiaos to gain his revenge and kill the son, Jiao Da-xing. He then watches how Mother Jiao accidentally kills her grand-son, Blackie, and removes Jinzi, a woman who was formerly his lover, from the family. In the Beijing opera, Qiu Hu wants to gain revenge as well, but he is not so vicious. When Jiao Da-xing realizes that Jinzi has never forgotten Qiu Hu, he stabs himself to death.

Li Bao-chu is characteristically good at utilizing Beijing Opera elements to create powerful settings. He used human props to play the trees which move fast and dance on stage to depict the forest in which the male and female leading actors lose their way. Such a design vividly captures the eerie nature and unpredictable changes of the forest.