‘You cannot reason with the insane’: actor Anthony Wong on censorship, a favourite stage play, the meaning of love, and why he’s not leaving Hong Kong

Dionysus Contemporary Theatre, which Wong co-founded 10 years ago, is staging a production of Enigma Variations, a play about an author and his dark secrets

Wong explains why he wants to ‘do justice’ to the play, and also why he’s not worried about censorship and isn’t leaving Hong Kong, in which he still has faith

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Anthony Wong Chau-sang will star in a production of the 1996 play “Enigma Variations” to mark the 10th anniversary of the theatre company be co-founded. He talks about not worrying about censorship and keeping faith in Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 11:15am, 16 Jun 2023Updated: 7:27pm, 16 Jun 2023

To mark the 10th anniversary of the stage company he co-founded, Dionysus Contemporary Theatre, award-winning Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong Chau-sang will be revisiting a play that is close to his heart.

Enigma Variations, written in 1996 by Franco-Belgian playwright Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, explores themes of love, death and secrets, and consists of a dialogue between two characters – a Nobel Prize-winning author and a journalist assigned to interview him.

In a 2012 Cantonese adaptation of the play by the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Wong co-starred opposite Joey Leung Cho-yiu.

Wong, 61, says he was drawn to the suspense and nuances of the play.

Wong at a coffee shop in Hong Kong. Asked if he has given up on the city of his birth, as some have whispered given time he has spent in Taiwan, he says: “Where there’s people, there’s hope.” Photo: Jonathan Wong

“I was already captivated by the script when I first did the play back then, but without adequate life experience, you only know it here but not here,” he says, pointing to his head, then his heart.

“It’s only after going through certain things [in life] that I truly realised just how well-written the dialogue is.”