HATER

The Space

★★★★

“an inventive, emotionally incisive, and culturally sharp piece”

Though not a new work, Hater makes an impressive appearance at this year’s Voila Festival. It opens with a deceptively gentle touch: a baby bunny puppet, soft and endearing, leads us into the story. But the sweetness quickly fractures, revealing far heavier terrain—C-PTSD, immigration, family trauma, fractured relationships, and the relentless pressures of survival. This sharp tonal shift immediately signals the ambition of Gawa Leung’s writing: a play about the invisible weight of immigrant life.

Rather than relying on grand statements, Hater builds its world through precise, almost documentary-like details of diasporic existence: the symbolic economics of a Tesco meal deal, the bureaucratic nightmare of visa systems, the absurd burden of performing a sexualized linguistic identity. These accumulated minutiae echo the sociological concept of “microaggressions”—small daily wounds that, as the play argues, eventually crystallize into the profound weariness that breeds a “hater.”

A brilliant structural device underpins the show: the four-part Bunny narrative, which functions both metaphorically and theoretically. The bunny, a creature perpetually out of place, becomes a precise mirror for the immigrant navigating a world never designed for her.

Gawa Leung and Lorraine Yu deliver the Bunny allegory with superb precision and emotional intelligence, guiding it through a four-part evolution without ever announcing its structure. A highlight arrives when Lorraine delivers “Mummy’s” Cantonese and Gawa translates live onstage. It’s not just bilingual performance—it becomes a vivid expression of the diasporic condition, where translation itself exposes both intimacy and cultural distance. As the bunny tries to “fit into a SeaLife,” Gawa and Lorraine shift effortlessly between humour and desperation, making assimilation feel almost physically suffocating. Under Tess Adèle Glinert’s direction, the piece moves with humour and sharp insight, rendering the immigrant world both painfully real and disarmingly funny.

The play’s central question—Where does the hater come from? —finds its answer not in grand passions but in a thousand tiny cuts. A hater is forged in the crucible of economic pressure, emotional isolation, familial misalignment, and the exhausting navigation of systems built for others. The meta-theatrical motif of “stalking another East Asian woman” is particularly sharp—not born of love or jealousy, but of a desperate immigrant self-interrogation: How did she make it? What is her secret to survival?

Hater is full of surprises, though two elements hold it back from complete polish. One is narrative clarity, that the allegorical Bunny structure is beautifully crafted, but the real-world narrative becomes scattered across too many thematic threads. Another is theatrical transitions: with such dialogue-heavy material, the production would benefit from more dynamic physical staging, bolder scene shifts, and more strategic lighting to maintain rhythm and visual engagement.

Overall, Hater is an inventive, emotionally incisive, and culturally sharp piece—rare in its ability to blend humour, trauma, and immigrant politics with daring imagination. Its potential is enormous, and with clearer dramaturgy and stronger theatrical transitions, it could solidify its place as an essential work of the diaspora canon.

HATER

The Space

Reviewed on 16th November 2925

by Portia Yuran Li

Previously reviewed at this venue:

WOMEN OVER 30 DON’T MATTER | ★★★★ | November 2025

AN INTERVENTION | ★★★½ | August 2025

A KISS FOR CINDERELLA | ★★★ | December 2024

ONE MAN POE | ★★★ | October 2021

HATER

★★★★

“a surreal, spirited, and philosophically rich work”

The moment you step into the theatre, Naran Ja announces itself as something deliciously strange. The stage resembles an experimental lab crossed with an unfinished puzzle — objects scattered like clues; a stillness so charged it feels as though the room is holding its breath for the steam machine to erupt. It’s surreal, playful, and quietly absurd — no wonder it’s one of the Voila Festival’s official picks.

The show unfolds through three intersecting storylines, drifting across time and geography. Dialogue is replaced by physical storytelling, puppetry, and live performance, building a dreamlike universe where everyday objects feel tender, haunted, and vividly alive. We see a birdhouse with a fragile egg; a polar bear with a Polaroid; a tripod sprouting a tree; a plastic toy van blooming with a plant. The props almost rhyme with one another, forming a visual poetry that lingers long after the scenes have shifted.

The trio of performers is sharply contrasted, each embodying a symbolic figure. Ludovica Tagariello appears first as the Firefighter, wrapped in heavy military gear — a costume that carries both duty and death. She is followed by Santi Guillamón, director and performer, who embodies a figure echoing Poland’s absurdist protest movement against Soviet rule — a cultural tremor that prefigured the fall of the Berlin Wall. He becomes our guide to the show’s political undercurrents. Finally, Sophie Stockwell delights as the Polar Bear, the comic pulse of the piece. Inspired by Germany’s iconic tourism mascots, her character roams the world taking selfies — a whimsical yet unexpectedly poignant observer of humanity.

Television static floods the stage with fragments of modern discourse — women’s rights, nationalism, ideology, identity. But eventually, all these human concerns fade into the sound of birds. Humanity’s grand narratives shrink into something small and paradoxical when placed against the eternity of nature. One of the most striking moments is when the Polar Bear steps off the stage and sits among the audience, watching the projected images of human history. In that instant, you can’t help but wonder: who is truly watching whom? And who, after all, is the real protagonist of history? Unlike Beckett’s human-centric absurdity, Naran Ja proposes an object-oriented ontology: humans are not the centre of the universe but merely one component in a vast, indifferent ecology.

This young ensemble builds a richly layered world from props alone — inventive, clever, and intricately interconnected. Childhood toys re-emerge as philosophical anchors: a plastic drill, a toy car, a fan breathing air across a potted plant. The work is not yet fully polished — a touch more technical precision and dramaturgical tightening would elevate it further — but the creative potential is undeniable. The ending lands with quiet brilliance: the spotlight turns toward the audience, leaving us with a simple, unsettling question. Now it’s your turn. What have we changed? What have we left behind? And in the absurd cycle of being human, what remains?

Overall, Naran Ja is a surreal, spirited, and philosophically rich work — one that suggests even greater wonders lie ahead.

Tag Archives: Portia Yuran Li

HATER

★★★★

The Space

HATER

The Space

★★★★

“an inventive, emotionally incisive, and culturally sharp piece”