For a few years now I've been lamenting the state of local Cantonese theatre. Solid actors are few and far between, as are good original plays. This month, more than a dozen dramas/plays will hit the stage and I'm looking forward to them with both anticipation and trepidation. Will I be glued to my seat or sneaking out at intermission?
Of the 15 productions, more than half are original works: Acting Inn's Mad About Coffee, Theatre Ronin's True Man Show in Showroom, 105 Drama Society's Left is Right, Shing Ha Theatre's Living to Beg, thealosophers' Lost in All-fish, Green Splash's The Negotiation, Theatre Horizon's The French Kiss, W Theatre's Queer Show and a new play by Free Theatre.
The rest are adaptations: Kearen Pang Production's Sylvia by A.R. Gurney, Loft Stage's Barefoot in the Park by Neil Simon, We Draman's The Goat or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee, The Absolutely Theatre Connection's The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder, Actor's Square's Boeing-Boeing by Marc Camoletti and Stephen Au Kam-tong in Rob Becker's one-man show Caveman.
Queer Show, Sylvia and Caveman are re-runs. The French Kiss, a Hong Kong Arts Festival commission in 2005, is being re-staged with a different cast.
I don't mind adaptations as long as the works are good. Neither do I have issues with re-runs because I think quality shows deserve more than the average one-weekend run (thanks to the shortage of performing arts venues). But I do wish there were more original, locally relevant works audiences can relate to.
One good example is playwright/actress Wong Wing-sze's My Grandmother's Funeral (2008), an intelligent one-woman show that pokes fun at the idiosyncrasies of family culture and also offers a fascinating glimpse into Taoist funeral rituals. Queer Show, now in its fifth run, is also entertaining. The semi-cabaret piece is as much about gay culture as the materialistic desires of urbanites.
