It may be because like Cynthia Hiu Ying Lam’s mother I, though of Scottish extraction, was also begun in China but born in Taiwan, from parents fleeing the Communist advance, that Chinese culture has exercised such a hold on my imagination – the delicacy of poetry and calligraphy and exquisitely embroidered silks – the sheer romance of its extraordinary history. I learnt by heart Ezra Pound’s translation of Li Po… “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours, Forever and forever, and forever…”

Thankfully before they were dust, Lam made a decision – to prise their life-stories from her ‘mum’ and her two grandmothers, and make from them a hauntingly beautiful play, a “matrilineal memoir”. We hear gripping stories of political danger in old China, one grandmother fleeing the Communists, the other the Japanese, while Lam’s mother must face the threat of the handover of Hong Kong. Their domestic lives too are beyond their control, marriages arranged against their will, “Your grandfather had to tie me to the bed”.

Understandably, Lam’s coolly distant mother aims to control her own destiny, becoming one of the first women to hold a high place in Hong Kong’s business world alongside the men, setting impossibly high standards for her own daughter, who aspires to be head of a multi-national company while in her twenties. Yet, describing herself as a high-functioning depressive, Lam is not happy, either in her lucrative career as Business Development Manager or in her marriage to a man who is diagnosed bi-polar, but attempts to gaslight his wife into believing she is the problem.

How to be a good Chinese woman in a world so changed from that of her ancestors? Little Lam plays with her blonde and bosomy Barbie dolls, and puzzles over the expression “banana” for ethnic Chinese who are “yellow on the outside, white inside”.  Older Lam at first attempts to suppress her feelings, then tries American self-affirmation therapies, about which she is subtly but amusingly cynical.

When we learn of Lam’s struggle to find her identity, her courageous change of career from high-powered capitalist to PhD student in Creative Writing in New Zealand, we may wonder why this memoir has not simply been left to stand as a written work. Lam’s secret dream, after all, is to be a writer, running freely on a wind-swept beach, not treading the boards. 

Hence I am grateful to dramaturg and director Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, and all who encouraged Lam to take the step of turning Love, Mum into theatre, for this is an experience I would not have missed. Kochhar-Lindgren is credited with the set design, but Lam is supported by a most proficient team that includes her aunt as calligrapher, her brother as video operator.

Although she does not see herself as an actor, Lam’s stagecraft is quietly exemplary, with clear voice and lovely movement. Various well-chosen devices make for unforgettable visual imagery, whether it is her graceful tai chi movements, the whirling shao lin staff used in martial arts, or the swift donning of a jacket from the onstage rail to become one of the older women. Meanwhile cloudy shapes in symbolic colours swirl behind her, hinting at the emotional turmoil the performer controls.

This is not in-your-face, confrontational theatre – Lam has a sensitive restraint, keeping a silk veil between us if you like, and though she shares, she does not intrude, nor ever seek to ingratiate herself with us – no winning smiles, just simple, unapologetic authenticity. Courage is needed, as she admits to her struggles, for we need to know what life is like for the immigrant child, afraid even to confess her family eats rice, not potatoes. The shame of being foreign, of feeling different and ugly.  She delivers her own script with a touching mix of dignity, vulnerability and grace, and like her we wish we could comfort her five-year-old self.

The set, against the black curtains of one of Dunedin’s most pleasant stages (St Hilda’s Performing Arts Space) is attractive: elegant hanging scrolls painted with Chinese calligraphy; a projection screen shredded into fluttering ribbons; red, white and black garments on a rail; a music-stand for the script that is only occasionally referred to; and the little Buddhist drum known as a wooden fish. This Lam strikes before she speaks, and it sets the tone for the blend of ritualised formality with casual conversational style.

The passages spoken in Chinese by grandmothers Por Por and Ah Mah are given translation on the shredded screen, and this is the only aspect of the production that is less than perfect, as the shadows, that lend artistry and mystery to the screen, cut the letters and much is illegible. However, the production team, realising this, has printed the translated words of each of the grandmothers, and included them with the programme. The lovely singing of Cantonese opera by Lam’s own mother needs no translation.

I am ravished by the fastidious crafting of Lam’s prose, right from the bold beginning with a co-ordinating conjunction, as if we are already in the middle of a conversation with an intimate friend: “So, I have been meaning to talk about my mother”. Her language soars from deliberately down-to-earth to evocatively lyrical, like her luscious description of being fed nectar from a flower; poetical (“abundance at the break of dawn”) to unexpectedly colloquial. (“Fuck you, and hello to me!”) Whether illuminating the China of Lam’s forbears, or the modern world she finds herself in, the writing is always appropriate, and the passages in Chinese, still romantic to my ears, provide a delightful contrast.

I regret that, with nine other Fringe shows to attend today, I will not be able to join Lam’s workshop on autobiographical writing, for she is as gracious off-stage as on, sweetly assuring me that my own sadly unimaginative Chinese name, “English child born in China”, or Jung Ying, is really pretty. *

But the memory I take away is of a stylish literary endeavour that surprisingly has become a true theatrical experience. I hold the poignant image of a small child hysterically running after the mother departing to her high-powered job, of Lam’s yearning for the relationship she might have had with her mother, “if I hadn’t been so angry and sad”. And her heart-breaking conclusion: “I realised today that I am still crying out for my mother”. I want Cynthia Lam and her mother to become each what the other needs, I want to possess the script, and I want to see that play again. 

• Love, Mum was presented at the Dunedin Fringe Festival with the help of a touring award from the Auckland Fringe, and was a finalist in several categories at the Dunedin Fringe Awards, including the City of Literature “Beyond Words” award.

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