Play «Cuộc Chiến Sắc Đẹp» (The Beauty War)

   Beauty, not weaponry, is what this court fights with: jealousy, scheming and a race for the sovereign's favour, all of it played for laughs. Twenty-odd performers spend three hours settling who really rules the inner palace, on a stage in District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City, a short walk from the Bùi Viện backpacker strip — and if you have wanted to try Vietnamese theatre without committing to something heavy, a period farce is the easiest way in.

   The Vietnamese title means “the beauty war”, and the official genre is hài kịch cổ trang — comedy in period costume. National broadcaster VTV summed up the plot as infighting over power and over the sovereign's favour in the rear palace; the poster lines up fifteen characters, from the empress to concubines and palace guards. The play was written by Phan Ngọc Liên and staged by Ngọc Hùng, who has run this theatre's artistic side since 2010.

   Worth knowing about the cast and the creative team:

• — Trịnh Kim Chi holds the title of People's Artist (NSND, the country's highest state honour for stage performers), is a former Miss Vietnam runner-up, and today serves as deputy head of the Ho Chi Minh City Theatre Artists' Association while running her own stage — so the comedy about a war of beauties has an actual pageant title-holder in it;
• — People's Artist Đàm Loan is also named in the Ticketbox cast list (the theatre's own list has Trịnh Kim Chi), so the line-up may vary by night;
• — Khả Như (born 1987 in Hậu Giang province) is an actress and TV host who grew into a star on this very stage;
• — alongside them: Hữu Tiến, Gia Bảo, Phương Lan, Duy Khương, Hữu Đằng, Lâm Nguyễn, Dương Thanh Vàng, Phúc Zelo, Phạm Yến, Huỳnh Quý, Lê Anh Bằng, Thanh Huy, Lim Phước Sang, Tú My, Duy Nam, Ngọc Hương, Đặng Nguyên Khang and Lý Thanh Chí;
• — costumes come from the historical-dress house Thiên Sơn Cổ Phục (Tâm Huỳnh), with set design by Hứa Mẫn, lighting by Tony Tùng and music by Hoàng Dũng and Ryo Lê; produced by Trần Đại and An Thi, with Nguyễn Hữu Tiến as executive producer.

   This is for you if you like situation comedy, or if you would rather see Vietnamese period dress moving on a stage than sitting in a museum case: costume, set and lighting each have their own team here, so the visual side carries as much weight as the dialogue.

   The show premiered in the Tết season of 2020, with Khả Như, Minh Dự, Hải Triều and Thùy Dương in the cast, as one of six Tết productions the theatre put on that year. It was revived for Tết 2026 with a new line-up that added Trịnh Kim Chi, and since February it has held a regular slot in the repertoire: there were performances in May, then an August run and September dates, and the next date on the bill is 1 November.

   The venue itself, Sân khấu Thế Giới Trẻ, was relaunched at the start of 2010 under the Sài Gòn Phẳng company and has aimed at a young audience ever since; the hall seats around 320 by its seating plan.

   One performance is on sale at the moment — Sunday, 1 November, at 16:00, running about three hours. The theatre opens ticketing in short blocks, so any later performances show up on the ticket page closer to the dates themselves.

   On tickets: there are three grades — standard, VIP and VVIP at 400,000₫, with VVIP (row A) not on Ticketbox but sold by the theatre itself; online, balcony seats go for the same price as standard ones. The play is performed in Vietnamese, and the genre helps: this is period costume theatre built to be watched — a dedicated historical-dress house, plenty of physical comedy, and palace intrigue that reads through the action.

   Come on Sunday afternoon and watch a Vietnamese court go to war with the only weapon it has: beauty.