Ha is a phenomenally poignant and daring piece with a message just as haunting as its delivery.
★★★★★
A woman sits on a chair in the dark. A stage light illuminates a face with her mouth wide open and hints at her naked form. The sound of her breath starts slow before becoming irregular, and something that could be fear or rage or pain or grief glistens in her eyes.
Performer Anano Makharadze’s powerful lungs tell stories for Georgia’s dead. By altering the rhythm of her breath and the amplification of her wails, she gives voice to the despair of those killed unjustly, the grief of their families, and the rage of their communities.
Anano Makharadze’s vocal technique and facial control are breathtaking. The transformation in expression as she howls and laments for the victims of brutal subjugation and war changes with every subtle shift of her body and expression.
Every breath and every movement is as deliberate and affecting as her words, challenging the audience’s fleeting empathy for only as long as the victims are on our screen. For only as long as we are comfortable.
The lighting designer was meticulous when working with Anano and the director, as each shift in scene from raging one minute to corpse-like the next was evocative. There are no distractions or gimmicks here. Just Anano and the message she’s bravely sharing with her body.
Ha is a phenomenally poignant and daring piece from a Georgian theatre group whose message about empathy should be just as haunting as its delivery.
Performed by Theatre Company Haraki. Show runs until 24 August.
HAHAHA-HAMLET is an energetic and innovative performance that reshapes a classic story and mirrors it with commentary on contemporary Hong Kong.
★★★★
This vivid musical starts fast and strong with the cast dancing on stage in camp costumes to surround Claudius, dressed in a cropped red fur jacket and tinted glasses like a rock star or a sensational talk show host. Only Hamlet, dressed in black, faces the audience with a dour look on their face.
It’s a chaotic opening as they begin rapping their written poetic verses, yet it works. We are immediately drawn into the familiar story with recognisable characters delivered in a fresh format. The audience is often bursting with laughter at their outlandish antics, fun rap battles and catchy songs.
It’s not all fun and games, however. Two other storylines are juxtaposed with Hamlet. The first are skits telling stories of ‘ordinary Hong Kongers’ in instances where they feel powerless in their everyday lives. From small momentary struggles of failing to get an e-commerce company to deliver its promise to shifts in the political environment that change how they live in their beloved city.
The third narrative between a student and teacher is the heart of the story. After the student asks the teacher for help on her thesis about Hamlet, they go back and forth in a debate that had me flashing back to my university days until agreeing to focus on Hamlet’s ‘lost years’. Years when political restrictions either officially or unofficially banned the work, including several times in England’s history, during the Soviet Union after Stalin’s disparaging words, briefly in Ethiopia, and during China’s Cultural Revolution.
When her teacher suddenly tells her she can no longer research that topic without an explanation, the audience is led to read the censorship between the lines. This production does a beautiful job of demonstrating the parallels between what one “can’t do” throughout all storylines and what is meaningful to do.
Told primarily in Cantonese with English surtitles, HAHAHA-HAMLET is an energetic and innovative performance that reshapes a classic story and mirrors it with commentary on contemporary Hong Kong.
Performed by Chai Wan Rabble.
Jeju makes a big impact on a simple set, demonstrating how a phenomenal cast and tight directing can bring to life a story even without a glossy set design.
★★★★
How do our parents show us love? It can be dependent on circumstance and ability, on culture and language, and made more or less obvious depending on the nature of the person.
So-dam (Kim Jubeen) and her father (Kang Wooram) have a fractured relationship. The former resents her father for never being there growing up and always prioritising business, even during her grandmother’s funeral. The latter is too busy earning a living and perhaps unable to form the words to comfort her.
This rift takes So-dam away to England, but not before her father asks her to help sell her grandmother’s house. A house that holds the memories, both those of joy and pain, of her beloved grandmother and her upbringing.
Enter three characters who appear as comic relief but play a significant role in helping her process grief and anger: our cheeky Dokkaebi (Kim Gun Wook) who engages the audience and helps her stop the sale; the overzealous architect (Kang Minseok) from the big city unaccustomed to local dialect; and her uncle (also played by Kang Wooram) who speaks in Jeju dialect, connecting So-dam to a place she seemingly left behind.
Through her interactions with all three and her father, So-dam works through panic attacks to clean out old wounds and learns all the small ways her father showed her love and care behind the scenes.
This is the second Korean performance I’ve seen this Fringe with Dokkaebi moving in and behind the scenes. Curiosity led me to researching the significance of these trickster goblins and found them interwoven through many forms of theatre, dance and literature.
Told mostly in Korean with English surtitles (and Scots when Jeju dialect was used), Jeju is cleverly written and wholeheartedly performed by all four actors who immersed us in So-dam’s story. During moments of tenderness or familial tension, the sniffling of some audience members was audible.
My favourite scenes were between the architect and uncle who couldn’t quite understand each other, both in language and behaviour, but still managed to create a connection and find shared values.
Jeju makes a big impact on a simple set, demonstrating how a phenomenal cast and tight directing can bring to life a script even without a glossy set design. An altogether delightful performance highlighting the complexity of family bonds and shared language, and asks us to look under the surface to see our loved ones’ true hearts.
Performed by Eyongyeol Company, directed by Nam Seungju, runs until August 24.
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