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AS THE LIKES  of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy win ever-larger audiences and ratings, it would seem there's growing acceptance of gay life in Hong Kong.

At least that's what the team behind Queer Show, a stage production focusing on one man's romantic history, hope.

The production, by local playwright  Wong Chi-lung, divides the life and loves of 30-year-old gay man Michael into three  acts.

Its confessional tone allows Michael to review his past love affairs as he bakes himself a birthday cake. 'The first bit  is about puppy love - it's a comedy,' says Joey Leung Cho-ying, who plays Michael.

'The middle part [recounting Michael's love affair with a 'bad but handsome man'] is like a soap opera. And the final bit is purely a love story.'

Michael's search for a soul mate, not his sexuality, is the crux of the production, says Leung, a 27-year-old Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts (HKAPA) student, who says he's confident audiences will warm  to the theme.

He hopes the show's title  won't deter conservative theatre-goers. 'We're not focusing on whether someone's gay or not,' he says. 'We're focusing on love itself - and that's universal.'

Wong is no stranger to challenging audiences - or himself. He seems to have  made it his mission to tackle genres and subjects that he has difficulty with.

'What Wong  sees is very different from what so-called theatre people see,' says  Leung. 'Because he hasn't trained professionally, he  goes by intuition. He really catches what society needs at  a particular moment.'

Wong's dislike of stand-up comedy and its tendency to quickly alienate members of an audience prompted him to try his hand at the genre in the first act of Queer Show.

Similarly, he tackled another pet hate - coming of age stories - in The Best Memory in My Life (2003), with Chet Lam Yat-fung,  in which Leung also performed.

Wong and Leung have collaborated five times. Perhaps the most bizarre was Shit 5, an absurdist fable about what Leung calls 'five stupid people' who become rich selling fish balls.  The play was a call-to-arms for Sars-struck Hong Kong.

'Hong Kong was so dead and the atmosphere was so bad,' says Leung. 'We wanted to tell everyone that, if we have hope, no matter what happens, we'll make it.'

The young actor, who translated Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie into Cantonese and took the role of Tom in the recent Little Girl House production, has never shied away from tough roles.

One of his earliest was that of Max in Martin Sherman's Bent, a play about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, at the HKAPA. 'It was an  amazing experience,' says Leung. 'All the things that happen in the play are real,  and when we performed we could feel the energy.  It was really strange.'

Leung says he hopes he'll soon feel the energy of a receptive audience ready for queer love.

Queer Show,  tonight-Sun, 8pm,  tomorrow and Sun, 3pm, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Shouson Theatre, $72-$145. Inquiries: 3128 8288. In Cantonese.



Nothing queer about it