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Plays, comedy shows and dance in Hong Kong
While assorted arts groups campaign to save Central Police Station, the Fringe Club are drawing inspiration from the heritage site in a novel way. They have uncovered a fragment of history from the time when Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman Ho Chi Minh was held captive in the site’s prison for 18 months.
In 1931, Ho Chi Minh travelled to Hong Kong to attend a meeting for leftist patriots. Tipped off by the French, the British authorities arrested Ho and threatened to deport him back to Vietnam. A legal battle followed, with British lawyer Francis Loseby interjecting to help the future leader of Vietnam.
Such an intriguing episode of Hong Kong’s history spurred Benny Chia, director of the Hong Kong Fringe Club, to commission Peter Wessley-Smith, the former Dean of the Faculty of Law at The University of Hong Kong, to write a stage play about the trial. The resulting one-man show Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong: His Persecution and the Triumph of the Glorious Rule of Law is being staged at the Fringe Club this month.
Playing the Vietnamese revolutionary is Lee Chun Chow, Assistant Director of the Chung Ying Theatre company and a three-time winner of Best Actor in the Hong Kong Drama Awards.
“It’s great working with Lee Chun Chow,” says the play’s director Peter Jordan, head of acting at the Academy for Performing Arts. “He handles the English very well and he’s a well-respected and well-known stage actor. It’s very nice to have this intense one-to-one relationship.”
The original script was first presented last year as part of the “Spotlight on Hong Kong” event in Singapore and this month the play makes its debut at the Fringe. “The script has been through several rewrites,” explains Jordan. “We’ve tried to tease out more details about Ho Chi Minh’s inner life and personality, to complement the legal facts, and to bring out Ho Chi Minh’s state of mind. This is before he succeeded in anything. He was a nobody; so how did he sustain himself through this period?”
Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong, May 15-18, 8.15pm, May 17 3.15pm, 7pm. Fringe Theatre, Fringe Club. $150 ($120). 3128 8288 or visit www.hkfringeclub.com.
A special last minute addition: Visit Ho Chi Minh In Jail, a short piece of Promenade Theatre, takes place at the Central Police Station Compound, May 15-18 at 7pm. Ho Chi Minh and his captors will perform in an actual cell. Tickets are $45 by calling Michele at 2525 4416 or email Michele@hkfringeclub.com
Clare Morin