Secret of his success

For the past two decades, Stan Lai Sheng-chuan's 1986 stage hit, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, has been popular with theatre companies on the mainland. But the Taiwanese playwright/director didn't find out why until last year.

The play's success goes back to a winter evening in Beijing, 15 years ago, when the film version, starring Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia, was shown at the Central Academy of Drama as part of a film festival.

Yuan Hong, an experimental theatre producer, was at the screening and only recently told Lai how the audience was 'giving catcalls' at the start of the movie. When Lin came on, he said, people were shouting 'This is lao tu [tacky]', and calling the movie stupid and melodramatic.

Then something strange happened in the theatre. 'After the first scene, those [first] few minutes, it started to become very quiet,' says the 52-year-old Lai, recounting Yuan's story.

'When the film finished, people didn't want to leave. There was an ad hoc gathering in front of the experimental theatre at the Central Academy. Some brought beer and others peanuts, and people talked about the film until dawn. I've had two accounts of that same evening.'

The other account came from actor Huang Lei, who was also at the screening, and was cast in a production that last year played to full houses in Beijing and Shanghai. Huang will appear in the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre's production of Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, which begins its run at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on Saturday.