AN urban landscape of alienation sets the tone for Tropical Rainforest on the Escalator, written and directed by award-winning Cheung Tat-ming and presented by one of Hong Kong's leading avant-garde theatre companies, Sand & Bricks.
The play attempts to reassess our relationship with nature.
The Earth, which had been a tropical rainforest for millions of years, is now a bleak landscape of concrete high-rises.
In a visually-arresting set depicting a cross-section of a skyscraper, five actors wait high above the world, in darkness. Gradually the cubicles they live in light up in various combinations and their characters are revealed; hypochondriac, sado-masochist, anorexic, chain-smoker and obsessive.
Later, the set pulls back to reveal a couple living at street level. They are expecting the birth of their first child and the arrival of an ascetic saint who, they believe, will save the world.
The husband is unemployed and obsessed with saving the whale; the wife is a visionary poet who dreams of the return of the rainforest to reclaim the space stolen from them by urban sprawl.
Threatened by debt collectors, they flee into the skyscraper. The play ends with the fulfilment of the wife's vision - a postman announces the arrival of the rainforest, the stage fills with greenery.