When ticket sales for Windmill Grass Theatre's latest production, Treats, opened last month, all five shows at the 500-seat Studio Theatre in the Cultural Centre were snapped up. The company quickly added an extra performance and that went within an hour.
The huge draw for the work by British playwright Christopher Hampton came not so much from the work itself, but from a growing fascination with the five-year-old company and its young cast, whose popular, contemporary approach to theatre is packing in audiences in their 20s and early 30s.
Few theatre-goers would have known who Hampton was, or that he had won an Oscar in 1988 for the screen adaptation of his play Dangerous Liaisons, and was nominated again last year for an adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement.
Treats stars three noteworthy actors: Joey Leung Cho-yiu, best known for his award-winning role in W Theatre's Queer Show (2004); Edmond Tong Chun-yip, who gave an outstanding performance in last year's Once in a Lifetime, also a W Theatre production; and Kearen Pang Sau-wai, a former Chung Ying Theatre actor whose shows 29+1 and Goodbye But Goodbye (2004 and 2007, respectively) won her a large female following. Leung, Tong and fellow actor Shaw Mei-kwan founded Windmill Grass Theatre in 2003.
Directed and adapted into Cantonese by Leung, Treats, written by Hampton in 1975, revolves around Ann (Pang), her boyfriend Patrick (Tong) and her ex Dave (Leung). According to Leung, 31, the work is about young people's misguided perceptions of love, reality and honesty.
'In Treats, people are not honest in telling others their feelings. It's something quite universal,' he says. 'Many people of our generation hide their feelings because they are afraid of losing face. All around us there are people like the three characters in Treats.'
