Promotion poster of "A Dream Like a Dream". [File photo]

Renowned theater director Stan Lai has brought his play "A Dream Like a Dream" back to Beijing's Poly Theater. It is an eight-hour epic that literally places the audience in the heart of the drama.

Watching this eight-hour production is in itself something like a dream. The plotline tells several interwoven stories, beginning with a medical school graduate's first day at a hospital, during which four of her five patients die.

None of her medical knowledge can stop it until she turns to psychology for her fifth patient, played by TV heart-throb Hu Ge.

"Being on stage is quite different from being on TV. For me, it's a great learning experience. And the stories and the philosophy in the show are so profound that it will become an unforgettable experience for anyone who sees it," Hu said.

A landmark in Chinese-language theater, this work revolutionizes the audience's experience by placing them in the center of the action while scenes unfold all around them.

"It's a long show. Performing around the audience, I think, is a respect to their eight hours' concentration," Lai said.

After its stop in Beijing, "A Dream Like a Dream" will come to Shanghai in February.