Tag Archives: Tina Chiang

Fix

Fix

★★★

Pleasance Theatre

Fix

Fix

Venue

Reviewed – 16th January 2020

★★★

 

“an interesting experience for theatre goers who like their plays cryptic and undetermined”

 

Fix is a play about an old woman who lives alone in a mysterious wood, and a repairman who comes to mend her very old washing machine. Julie Tsang’s play is part thriller, part mystery, all set in a puzzling location that could be a forest in, well, just about anywhere. But before one starts thinking Grimm’s Brothers’ fairytale, it is clear that the Chinese woman, Li Na, who inhabits the house, is no western witch waiting to ensnare young children with sweets. She is, however, clearly part of a Chinese mythology, either traditional or reimagined, who may, or may not, have dragons in her attic.

The premise for this story is straightforward, but from the moment Kevin arrives at Li Na’s house, everything else dissolves into ambiguity. So it is for the audience—the moment we enter the downstairs space at the Pleasance Theatre. The set (designed by Rachel Wingate) is low lit (lights designed by Ali Hunter), and the fog in the air creates a further sense of indistinct boundaries. The seating bleeds into the set on one side. So it’s a nice touch when the cast enters the back of the stage from the street and injects a sense of a concrete world outside before enclosing us once again in this enigmatic space. Added to all this mist and mystery is Richard Bell’s sound design, which is also highly appropriate to the theme, and which adds yet another layer of doubt.

The play begins with a voice telling us a myth about a “magnificent tree on six legs.” Then Kevin steps into the house, and his first response is to tell Li Na, very firmly, that her washing machine is too expensive to fix, and that she’s better off just buying a new one. Things get weird. Li Na doesn’t want a new machine, despite having the money to buy one. She wants this one fixed, and fixed tonight. She has money, she has beer if Kevin’s thirsty, she has tea for his headache. She keeps repeating, ominously, that he “will be here awhile.” She asks a lot of questions about whether her house is the last call of the day, and whether he has anyone he needs to go home too. Playwright Tsang has great skill in building suspense. Actors Mikey Anthony-Howe and Tina Chiang present characters Kevin and Li Na as fully rounded and believable. Fix is ably supported by Jen Tan’s direction.

But the problem with Fix is that, plot wise, it wanders in much the same way that Kevin once wandered through Li Na’s woods as a boy. At any point during the play, the audience might be wondering “is this the moment dragons burst through the ceiling”? “Why does Li Na steal a tool from Kevin’s tool bag if she’s not planning to brain him with it”? And despite all these warnings that something is not quite right in Li Na’s house, Kevin doesn’t seem to want to escape nearly enough. Instead, this experience is a seventy minute stroll through a series of shifting situations from a real problem (fixing the washing machine) to less explicit problems (what else has Kevin been summoned to fix?) with a lack of a clear resolution at the end.

In conclusion, Fix is best summed up as an interesting experience for theatre goers who like their plays cryptic and undetermined. It does take a fresh look at the more traditional murder mystery, but even that may be reading too much into this perplexing situation.

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Nicole Latchana

 

Fix

Pleasance Theatre until 1st February

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
The Perfect Companion | ★★★★ | October 2019
The Unseen Hour | ★★★★ | October 2019
Endless Second | ★★★ | November 2019
Escape From Planet Trash | ★★★ | November 2019
Heroin(e) For Breakfast | ★★★★★ | November 2019
Land Of My Fathers And Mothers And Some Other People | ★★★★ | November 2019
Madame Ovary | ★★★★★ | November 2019
Wireless Operator | ★★★★ | November 2019
Gobby | ★★★½ | December 2019
Tom Brace | ★★★½ | December 2019

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews

 

Mountains: The Dreams of Lily Kwok – 4 Stars

Lily

Mountains: The Dreams of Lily Kwok

Stratford Circus Arts Centre

Reviewed – 19th April 2018

★★★★

“Jennifer Tang’s direction is inspired, giving vivid life to the world of the play and weaving the text into an abstract, but very real, whole”

 

This is a family story rooted in one woman’s determination to move mountains to create a better life for herself and her daughter. It is also a true story, based on Helen Tse’s memoir ‘Sweet Mandarin,’ and adapted for the stage by In-Sook Chappell.

The play begins with Helen, a successful financial lawyer. She has taken a job in Hong Kong, hoping to find a part of her history that she knows nothing about, and to connect with the place her family came from. But she feels out of place, she’s ‘a girl who grew up in a chippy,’ and the crazy pace and crowds of Hong Kong feel far from home. Then Helen meets her grandmother Lily Kwok, now young again, and dreams Lily’s life, sharing in, and experiencing, the history she wants to know, and learning about Lily’s dreams. The relationship between Siu-See Hung’s Helen and Tina Chiang’s Lily is touching and powerful. As Helen learns more about her grandmother’s life she understands why Lily never wanted to tell her story.

The play moves around in time, as Lily reluctantly lets Helen experience a life she never could have known. Helen sees the extreme poverty of her mother’s first years, her grandmother’s struggle to earn enough money to feed her baby and her ailing mother. She ‘becomes’ Lily, as she meets her grandfather and comes to realise the brutality of so much of Lily’s life in Hong Kong. There is visceral menace in the staging of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during the second world war, and despair in Lily’s struggle to survive. But there are also moments of delicious humour, and a luminous sense of women connecting across the generations.

There are some memorable performances, and none more so than Ruth Gibson’s portrayal of Mrs Woodman, an upper class Englishwoman who Lily works for as a maid. Mrs Woodman treats Lily with kindness and a casual, unconscious racism that is shocking but hilariously done. The other cast members, Matthew Leonheart, Minhee Yeo, Rina Takasaki and Andy Kettu play a range of characters, managing to clearly inhabit each one. Takasaki’s performance as Mable, Lily’s daughter, is as moving as Kettu’s Japanese soldier is terrifying. Leonheart’s woman charming Chan, who marries Lily and descends into opium addiction, is far from the stereotype the role could suggest, and Yeo’s Kit Ye gives a fun glimpse of a warm relationship with Lily, showing the strength that women can give each other when times are hard.

Jennifer Tang’s direction is inspired, giving vivid life to the world of the play and weaving the text into an abstract, but very real, whole. The action is often choreographed, using the seven actors to create cityscapes and atmosphere, beautifully devised by Movement Director Lucy Cullingford. Amelia Jane Harkin’s set is simple, evocative and flexible and, coupled with Elena Pena’s soundscape and Amy May’s lighting design, it transports the audience into Hong Kong’s past. When the second half opens with Lily cooking on stage the sensory experience is complete!

Food is a theme of the play. When Lily has enough money she opens one of the first Chinese restaurants in England. Helen has inherited her grandmother’s love of food, and would rather cook than be a lawyer, but she is fulfilling her family’s expectations, being a good daughter. Will she have the courage to tell Lily that she would rather open a restaurant? My only criticism of the play is that it cut off too soon, leaving the relationship between Lily and her daughter unresolved, and skipping over the early years in England too quickly. I would have liked a little more.

We know that, in reality, Helen did open a restaurant. Along with her two sisters she opened ‘Sweet Mandarin,’ a celebrated Chinese restaurant in Manchester. Next time I am in town I’m booking a table!

 

Reviewed by Katre

Photography by Jonathan Keenan

 


Mountains: The Dreams of Lily Kwok

Stratford Circus Arts Centre until 21st April

 

 

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