Review: Micah Sandt’s linguistic agility shines as Gweilo brings Martin Booth classic to the stage

Gweilo, a play by Pants Theatre Production, is based on the 2004 memoir of the same name by the late Martin Booth.

The book is about Booth’s fond memories of growing up in 1950s Hong Kong, a blond, blue-eyed boy whose mother encouraged him to mingle with the locals and learn Cantonese.

It remains a popular book, though detractors find it to be overly sentimental and Booth’s devotion for his mother and obvious hatred for his father uncomfortable.

Kenneth Booth, a civil servant posted to Hong Kong from Britain, still gets short shrift in the play: a “stick-in-the-mud” with too much fondness for a pink martini. But Micah Sandt delivered a solo performance where he shifted between characters and languages with remarkable agility and competence, conveying affection without overweening nostalgia.

Sandt, who has a Finnish mother and French father, is himself a third-culture kid who grew up in Discovery Bay and went to a local school.

Fluent in English and Cantonese, he is the young Booth who flits between worlds. This is not just the view of a dying man in Britain but a very real experience today.