Sometimes, home-grown is best

Apart from acclaimed foreign works from around the world, any international performing arts festival presents local performances – and some even commission and produce new works. Comparison is inevitable of course. And while audiences routinely complain that certain home-grown productions have no place in the same festival as their renowned overseas counterparts, other local works enjoy such critical acclaim and popular success that they are later restaged, outside the festival, and even get invitations to perform overseas.
Foreign visitors and expats form a part, no matter how small, of every festival’s audience population – and they usually want to see what they cannot see elsewhere or what people elsewhere have not seen – and that’s local productions. Language is not an issue for dance and music; while theatre nowadays gets help from English surtitles.
An unfortunate exception is our Bangkok festival, which has not presented any local work for several years now. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for this year’s line-up.
After good experiences watching Danny Yung’s “Tears of Barren Hill” and Tang Shu Wing’s “Titus Andronicus” four years ago, I have always timed my visit to Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) carefully to catch the few local works the festival presents.
In playwright Poon Wai-sum’s “Show Flat”, which he also directed, two potential buyers were wooed by three agents at a show flat. It’s a significant and universal subject matter to begin with, as demand for condos is rising in cities across the world. Empathy came even easier for this viewer – I’ve been looking for a flat ever since the floods chased me from my house for two months last year.
This “viewing” began to drag, though, and the theatrical style tangle when we were led into surrealistic scenes of ancient China. A glance at the programme told me the director had been inspired by the Chinese traditionalism of A Cheng’s novel “Shu Wang” (“The Tree King”). Right there I started to lose attention, partly because of the tiredness from reading the English surtitles. More interesting, though, was the appropriate link made between this tiny flat and Hong Kong, now that the latter is Chinese SAR and mainlanders have flooded there in recent years.
Staged alongside the HKAF was Chong Mui-ngam’s “The Wild Boar” directed by Yan Wing-pui, whose subtle metaphors had sharp things to say about press freedom versus the control of government and corporations. At a time when newspapers take obvious political stands and choose to rely more on advertising revenue than sales to readers, the action onstage packed a topical punch – especially for any Thai in the audience.
In the play a seasoned editor resigned from an establishment publication to start his own independent paper where he was joined by his former junior. They were investigating the case of a historian’s mysterious disappearance, which is linked to the government’s new controversial urbanisation plan.
After enjoying her “Murder in San Jose” at the HKAF three years ago, my thoughts were just as provoked by Yan’s “Boar”. Straightforward spoken plays, both are highly engaging thanks to unpredictable plots, well-written dialogue and specific situations that resonate far beyond their locales. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to watching and reading her future works.
Noteworthy was that “The Wild Boar” was among the fastest-selling tickets at the HKAF, despite being up against a line-up of famous international works. This was mainly down to its two stars of the screen Wong Chi-wah – a female audience member next to me snapped a few sneaky shots of him with her phone – and Karena Lam. They demonstrated that there’s nothing wrong with using superstar bait to lure the general public to the theatre, especially when it’s a good play and the big-screen names adjust their acting styles accordingly.

For your calendar

The 41st Hong Kong Arts Festival runs from late January to early March next year. Highlights include the American Ballet Theatre, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Teatro di San Carlo, Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. And of course, there will also be local works. Advance bookings from October. Visit www.HK.ArtsFestival.org for more details.