Review-BLAST-Hong Kong Arts Fest
9-3-13
By: Tom Hope
BLAST sets out to be a shit play. Which is to say, it revolves around shit. The shit we put up with from the people we live with. The shit we create. The shit that showers on us from a great height. The shit that just happens.
The set-up is straightforward enough. Three men occupy a subdivided flat in what might be our very own Fragrant Harbour city: an ageing pizza delivery man, a just-graduated student poet and a Mandarin speaking con-artist from the mainland’s north. Along with super-cramped quarters (a 3 tier bunk plus kitchen sink) and a Western style toilet bowl, they share fantasies of a better life and quick-fix ambitions for attaining it – ambitions which, however, swiftly self-sabotage and set the three of them at each other’s throats and other orifices.
Deploying scatological humour and language (in Mandarin and Cantonese, with English surtitles) laid on thicker than the bottom of a cess pit, the not-so-buddy-buddy sit-com plot is invaded periodically by a surreal ‘vision of loveliness’ – the perfect woman of their dreams - who walks through their lives (and across the set) to devastating effect.
What could have been played naturalistically for laughs is pushed to absurd limits in other ways. The main plot drive – the 3 men squabbling over who gets the money from a sperm bank donation – complements the often surreally offbeat humour. We think we are in Hong Kong but it could be anywhere in the Pearl Delta as the men suddenly launch into a karaoke routine venerating the women of neighbouring locations (and Dongguan in particular). And then there’s all the ‘business’ of the toilet…
It’s an oddly outrageous but appealing mix. It took a while to get going – and it didn’t help that the opening scenes are fractured into mini-scenes with pay off lines that failed to get the laughs they seemed to be seeking. But by 15 minutes in - once the scenes stretched to allow the cast leg room for ‘shooting the shit’ - the audience warmed and was well held to their seats.
Last night was a world premiere performance. Hunan born but Shenzhen raised author Wang Haoran was commissioned to write this ‘New Stage New Work’ especially for the HK Arts Festival and director Chan Chu-hei had his cast well-drilled for what seemed a flawless performance, with excellent production values. A wonderfully cluttered central ‘room’ (where most of the action plays) could have constrained the cast but instead they used its plentiful features for deft comic and dramatic effect. The lighting was also effective, transforming the adjoining toilet from a mostly dark and austere ablution block to throne rooms of a different kind conjured by the characters’ imaginations, and isolating each section of stage to allow nifty stage business. An atmospheric soundscape held the attention between scenes while heightening the weightier moments with subtle underscoring.
With such a fine wrapper, what exactly is at this production’s ‘shitty’ core? Maybe best not to say too much - partly for fear of over-disclosing, partly for not wanting to be thought a bull-shit philosopher in over-analysing a comedy which is right up (or down) there with the likes of American Pie for frat-pack prat-fall slap-stick. Also, with only the surtitles to judge by, it’s dangerous for a non-Cantonese to pronounce on something so culturally specific. I’ll settle for this – that the laughs sit alongside downbeat satire belied by a belief in the potential for flushing everything down the pan and starting out ‘fresh’. Quite where that leaves our own Fragrant Harbour is not specifically addressed – but Blast made me think as well as raising, in more ways than one, its own special kind of stink.
BLAST is playing at the Hong Kong Cultural Center through Monday. For more information, click here.
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