A Chinese Christmas

“… seeing the differences in our cultures and cross-cultural blends of migrant diasporas, there is an invisible unity …”                                                   

I saw this play and read the words above from its director Monica Sayers on the evening of Sunday 15^th December. We left the theatre carrying a little red envelope, a hongbao or lai see, handed to us by the playwright, Trent Foo, who had just performed as Heepa, the young man in his very symbolic play. Inside the envelope was a message:

Christmas is near,

Our ghosts are put to bed.

Call someone dear,

Say what’s been left unsaid.

As we drove west out of Sydney, feeling uplifted by this play about family and traditions, to the east, on the beach at Bondi, another ancient tradition was being celebrated … and maliciously defiled.

It’s been hard to write this review about a play that is so happy and uplifting without acknowledging how easily sadness can follow joy – and how important it is that we don’t allow the “invisible unity” that is our special heritage to be destroyed.

Trent Foo’s play is about identity and culture, about belonging and fitting in, about “honouring our loved ones … and sometimes facing up to things we’re not ready to face”. It’s about his own Chinese Christian heritage, but its messages resonate for everyone, whatever their faith or culture … or whatever things they have left unsaid.

Foo, as Heepa, tells his story with a joyous energy, and an honesty that radiates whether the memories of his character are happy … or tempered by regret. Foo is athletic, lithe. He moves Heepa lightly around the stage as he reaches out to the audience that surrounds him, or beyond them to the ancestors that he summons to help him “say what’s been left unsaid”.

For each of those ancestors there is a story – short, important, moving, mostly funny – and a symbol. Some hide in the chaotic set that is his memory. Others swing down to him from the ancestors high above. Each symbol – a fish, a lantern, a box of Mahjong tiles – becomes a light in the ladder that is his makeshift Christmas tree.

In memories of his youth he tumbles about the stage, or pulls a blanket over his head as he re-lives a nightmare and cries out to “Pawpaw” – played by Tiang Lin – the grandmother who has “shaped his identity” and appears now and again to watch him, or comfort him … or chastise him.

Lin brings the calmness of age and wisdom as she moves quietly on and off the stage. Her voice is soft but commanding. Her presence imposing. The contrast – and the distance – between youth and age, impetuousness and calm has been skilfully managed by Foo in his writing, and by Sayers in her astute blocking and well-tuned timing.

Timing and time are integral to this piece of theatre – and they are controlled deftly by multi-instrumentalist Jolin Jiang who, as Lady Di, hidden behind a gold mask, uses a range of Eastern instruments and their poignant notes and tones to vary moods, conjure spirits – and keep Heepa in line!

Jiang is a highly accomplished musician and performer, whose gentle touch and fine sense of theatricality authenticate the importance of the past and the present in Heepa’s story. Contemporary lighting (Cat Mai) and sound (Cameron Smith) support that theatricality, helping Sayers achieve what she describes as “the world around Heepa (which) at times feels like walking into a nostalgic fever dream of memories and flashbacks”.

All of us have those “nostalgic dreams”. Sometimes happy. Sometimes sad. Too often fleeting. Even more often too hard to recapture … or hidden by shame or obstinacy. But all important in shaping who we are.

Fortunately, clever writers like Trent Foo realise the importance of capturing them and sharing them – and making us realise that our strength lies in the combined learnings and wisdom of those who came before us and give us that “invisible unity” that we must not let anyone try to destroy.

The lights on Heepa’s tree shine brightly – just as the lights of Hanukkah will keep shining as they have since 165BC – both positive reminders “that our stories, no matter how different, move us toward understanding connection and truth.” (Monica Sayers).

Carol Wimmer