Martial arts meets show business as “Shaolin Warriors” takes the stage at the Blaisdell Concert Hall this week. It’s good to report that its commercial packaging promotes the physicality of the troupe without compromising it.

When a single martial artist explodes with powerful jabs, kicks, and twists — then freezes into a studied pose — that’s disciplined sport. When 16 of them do it — synchronized to music under black lights that turn faces blue and costumes into flame — that’s entertainment.
And the opening night crowd was clearly entertained by “Shaolin Warriors’” muscular prowess, choreographic control, special stunts and human comedy bits. While the Shaolin monastery may have been mastering the art of kung fu for the last 15 centuries, somebody with Vegas flair seems to have recently slipped over their wall.
The production has a Web page, a 10-year performance history, and is appearing in Honolulu to start its current tour to 20 mainland cities. In performance, you can expect two hours of staged ritual, simulated combat, animal-inspired exercise routines and downright flair.
Add in some laughs generated by audience participation as kids and adults are invited up for impromptu lessons and the chance to stump a monk.
There’s a soundtrack of pseudo chant and percussion, yoga poses and contortionist moves, tumbling, and side show acts that would have been right at home in a Barnum extravaganza. Heads and abs are shown to be tougher than stone and wood, and a two-man sandwich layered between swords and spikes is topped by a cement slab and pulverized by a steel hammer.
The bits of simulated hand-to-hand combat are accessorized with sticks, swords, and lances and the full company numbers include a youngster running up the back of a simulated dragon and a tumbling wave action that could have been done in your high school gym class — if it were full of monks driven by 1,500 years of disciplined history.
Staging includes incense, smoke, special lighting, saffron robes and a couple of realistic backdrops that mimic the main gate of the Shaolin monastery in Henan, China, and its neighboring Pagoda forest.
But despite is showy effects and calculated staging, the production’s strongest component remains the authenticity of its individual performers.
Some two dozen young men — and a couple of pre-teen boys — aren’t faking anything or cutting corners. They are simply flat-out excellent at what they do and the obvious product of hard work and training discipline.
When one of them strips off his shirt and does a series of isometric exercises to ready his abs to be struck hard by a wooden log, he’s hiding nothing. When another executes a cartwheel high in the air that seems frozen in space, there are no hidden wires.
Individually, each represents the triumph of determined flesh over pain and gravity. Collectively, they are a stunning ensemble that is well worth seeing.
Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing Hawaiçi theater since 1973.