This time it's personal
On a recent Saturday evening, cabaret performer Rick Lau stepped onto the stage at the Fringe Club and within minutes had cast a spell over his audience. Opening with Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, an evocative and intensely personal sideways look at sex, love and relationships, it was as if he had waved a magic wand.
By turns, he was haughtily aloof, playfully coy then flighty and flirtatious in a charming encounter with a (probably straight) male member of the audience. It drew laughter from all around.
That Lau's face illuminates a kaleidoscope of emotions - crumpling with dejection one minute then creasing up with unabashed joy the next - is visually riveting. Then there's his resonant baritone voice, which draws deep from within his lanky frame. Turn away and listen carefully, and that same facial intensity is illuminated in the nuances of his voice.
Days later, a happy-go-lucky Lau walks into the Fringe again. He speaks about how strange it felt to do that show in the bar area for the first time instead of in the theatre.
'It's a new experience,' says the veteran of productions such as How Now Rick Lau, SunRice and Men in Love, which have featured in the Hong Kong City Festival organised by the Fringe Club. 'That show was more like a cabaret, so it's intimate entertainment and should be in a space like that. Everyone can see your eyes and nostrils, but I'm starting to enjoy the closeness of it.'
Then the conversation changes direction as Lau enthuses about how he's just returned from a retreat in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney: not just how it came to happen, but how he spent 10 days in complete silence doing yoga and meditation.
After a 15-month marathon tour with Miss Saigon in Australia, during which time he played the Engineer, he found he had a two-week break.
'Normally, this retreat is fully booked but they had space; it was meant to be,' says Lau. The third and sixth days of the retreat were, he'd been told, the worst, as hours of meditating in silence in yoga positions slowly eat away inside. On the third day, he felt angry and left the yoga room, heading for the balcony overlooking the mountains.
'My friend who'd recommended the retreat to me said: 'Remember to laugh about it'. And that's what I did. I stood up and laughed.'
Having broken through the pain barrier that day, he returned to his meditation. The sixth day was the hardest mentally because he felt restless. 'It's all about forcing you to spend quality time with yourself,' he says. 'It's not something Hongkongers do. Actually, it wasn't that difficult. The only message was Buddhist - that everything is impermanent, that we should observe, look and not react.'
Lau adds with a laugh that some found it difficult to embrace. 'No sex of any kind was allowed, but there was one male and female who'd meet on the quiet out the back. They were asked to leave.'
It all seems a world away from Lau's previous life, in which he was an IT consultant for six years. From a traditional Kwun Tong family, he was sent to the University of New South Wales in Australia. He wanted to pursue music because he loved singing, but his family wanted him to study something solid such as accounting. They compromised on computer science.
Despite building a career in IT at a top accounting firm, he performed on the side in amateur productions. His initiation into musicals came through a friend who played Barbra Streisand's The Broadway Album all the time. Although he initially pleaded with his friend to stop, the song If I Loved You, from Carousel, hooked him. He watched the film and never looked back.
The first production he appeared in was Oklahoma!. Later came Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures, in which he was cast as the lead and learned a lot. 'It was that show which inspired me to think I could do it for the rest of my life and led me into a different world,' he says. Another turning point occurred when he was taken to a clairvoyant when he was about 28. 'She painted a picture of me in words. She saw me on the stage in elaborate costumes and behind me was a wooden panel,' Lau says. In the vision, 'the audience was captivated and I was told I didn't just sing, but I sang from the heart.'
It prompted him to hand in his notice without knowing what he'd do. Lau says: 'All I knew is that it was a big message from the divine. What I also know now is that if you leap, the mat will appear.'
He was accepted by the National Institute of Dramatic Art to study music theatre, and since then he has won critical acclaim in Australia.
Lau says his family still wishes he'd get a normal job. 'They nag me and think I'm crazy,' he says. 'It was only when they finally saw one of my shows in Adelaide that I could tell them why I gave up IT.'
His next show at the Fringe is on August 9 and, not surprisingly, perhaps, it'll be about turning points. 'It's not a gay show, although I don't think sex should be an issue. It should be a part of me.'
Lau says he had planned a month's holiday in Hong Kong after the end of Miss Saigon. 'I felt like I wanted to stay,' he says. 'It felt like I'd come home.'
He thinks he'll stay eight months to a year. He's doing a little teaching and then there are the Fringe performances. Since returning, he's found he's become a 'yes man', unable to turn down new opportunities, even though he says he doesn't know where they will lead him. Bewitching and bewildering? Rick Lau most certainly is. But in the nicest - and least bothersome - way.
Rick Lau performs in Rick at the Fringe every second Saturday in August and September at 10.30pm.
