Rock, jazz and hip hop influences in period Chinese musical premiering in Hong Kong about a psychic lawyer
- The Impossible Trial, a play about a Qing dynasty lawyer and the voice he hears, is the first Cantonese musical to premiere in West Kowloon Cultural District
- It has a ‘modern sensibility’ its creators hope will attract a wide audience, and will be staged with English subtitles at the Xiqu Centre for Chinese opera
Rock, hip hop and jazz may not be what one would expect to hear during a Cantonese musical set in the Qing dynasty, but those are the influences that composer Leon Ko cites when describing his latest project.
Set to open on September 9 at the Xiqu Centre, The Impossible Trial will be the first original Cantonese musical to premiere in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD).
It follows the greedy Fong Tong-geng, a Qing dynasty (1644-1912) barrister who is willing to take on any case – no matter how dirty – as long as he is paid. Of course, there’s a twist: a mysterious voice lends him the powerful ability to know exactly what others are thinking.
“A very obvious case at the very beginning is completely turned around because of his ability and his agility,” Ko explains. “From that point on, it’s about the relationship between him and this voice that is helping him. And that’s [how] the story unfolds – you find out what you think in the beginning is not what it becomes.”
Ko, together with lyricist Chris Shum Wai-chung, first conceived the idea for a musical set in a Qing dynasty courtroom in 2015. Two years later, they began working with Louis Yu Kwok-lit, then the executive director of performing arts at WKCD, to bring the project to life as a collaboration between performing arts centre Freespace, and the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre (HKRep).