Hong Kong (28 Feb – 5 March 2019)

 

It’s been four years since I visited Hong Kong or watched the HK Arts Fest. This time, I watched  four performances. The trigger for this trip was the Leipzig Opera’s Tannhauser but I could not resist Robert Lepage’s Ex Machina or the Cantonese opera. The big surprise of the four was Hamnet. I had thought Hamnet was a mis-spelling of / spoof about Hamlet but found out that Shakespeare had a son Hamnet who died at the tender age of eleven. Through an ingenious mix of multimedia and live acting, the play by Dead Centre revealed the loneliness of the young boy whose father was constantly at work mirrored by his father’s loneliness on his untimely demise. Young Aran Murphy, just shy of 12 years old won our hearts with his touching portrayal of the deceased boy.

 

My companions on this trip were my dear friend (from nine years old) Suon Kuok and playwright Chong Tze Chien. We met my New Zealand opera buddy Dr Paul Tan there and another dear friend and arts manager extraordinaire Tisa Ho who has managed the festival for 15 years.

 

Thanks to my choreographer friend Elysa, we discovered the re-purposed prison building Tai Kwun Contemporary where I encountered a work by Jane Euler for a second time in two years. At Tze Chien’s suggestion, we also visited galleries in an industrial precinct. We also visited the Flagstaff Tea Museum and braved the tram ride to the Peak on a crowded Sunday afternoon.

The highlight for me,  thanks to Paul Hennig (Head, Technical & Productions) was the backstage tour of the XiQu Theatre which houses a theatre and tea house dedicated to Chinese opera. These are two of 15 theatres being built in three waves along the waterfront of West Kowloon.  The theatre’s acoustician is Bob Essert who I worked with on the Esplanade Theatre in the mid-1990s. The other highlight was a night’s stay at the Island Shanghai-La. it was a real treat not only to enjoy the comforts of a deluxe hotel room but its collection of artworks.

My next trip to Hong Kong will be to eat dim sum and sip tea while watching Chinese opera at the new XiQu Theatre tea house.