God Save the Queen
Black Box Theatre, Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre Fri 30-Sun 1
When we tried to reach Samson Young, it appeared that he had vanished from Facebook. This seemed strangely appropriate given that his new show – God Save the Queen, an electronic requiem with multimedia effects – explores another intriguing disappearance: Hong Kong’s fading nostalgia for the last of the colonial years.
We eventually found him – in Queen’s Café. The Kowloon Tong space is a replica of the Causeway Bay original that featured heavily in Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild and has since been torn down. “It’s very much about what’s here and what’s not,” says Young of his upcoming show. “As I wrote the piece, it became all about the notion of the Queen in our lives.”
The composition started out as a requiem for Queen’s Pier, and evolved into a hymn to the structures, both physical and symbolic, of Young’s teenage days – which were also the last of the colony’s. God Save the Queen will be performed by Young and musicians of the City Chamber Orchestra, with chorus members singing the Latin requiem text.
The performance is accompanied by a mixture of live footage from five theatre-based CCTV cameras, and pre-recorded clips of screen icon Helena Law Lan (who often played royalty for TV), dressed as the Queen. Such an audacious performance would be enough to keep any artist busy, but once the colonial parade winds down, Young really will have no excuse for not being on Facebook.
Bourree Lam
Tickets 2734 9009, www.urbtix.hk.
Tags:
Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre, Black Box Theatre details
Area Shek Kip Mei
Other events nearby
Add your comment