Auckland’s ever-expanding Lantern Festival has burst out of its Albert Park site to encompass a contemporary piece of theatre that casts a flickering light on aspects of the Chinese experience that usually remain unseen.

By focusing on personal responses to a disintegrating marriage, playwright Renee Liang has created an intimate Kiwi drama that confirms Tolstoy’s adage that every unhappy family is “unhappy in its own way”. 

There is a finely nuanced understanding of cultural stereotypes, with the New Zealand-born children of Chinese immigrants showing they are completely at home with Kiwi culture but still feel a painful sense of being outsiders. [More]

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The first play officially produced as part of Auckland’s annual Lantern Festival, Pretty Asian Theatre (PAT)’s new production is an engaging, humorous drama centred around the Chens, a small, estranged Kiwi-Chinese family leading up to their traditional family New Year celebration meal. 

Herself born and raised in New Zealand by her Chinese parents, playwright Renee Liang explains in the programme that certain events in the story come directly from her own colourful experiences.  The narrative is wholly fictional however, exploiting the specific perspective of local migrant and first generation Chinese culture to express themes universal throughout humanity, notably the joyous cohesion and frustrated confusion that defines the family unit. 

Co-directors Eli Matthewson and Hamish Parkinson have taken an instinctively pragmatic approach to the task.  Five male and four female roles are performed, sometimes in rapid succession by two skilled actors, James Roque and Chye-Ling Huang, with enough versatility to tell them apart while retaining a relaxed naturalism that keeps us in the story, rather than getting distracted by overtly idiosyncratic performances. 

It appears each of the Chens has their own personal paradox to cope with:  Henry is the proud, stoic patriarch whose matter-of-fact outlook seems equally sagacious and hard-nosed.  Essentially a good man, the horrendous wartime atrocities he was forced to witness and endure as a very young child clearly had a profound effect on his being. 

As with a number of the threads in the family’s convoluted array of issues, precisely what events eventually caused everyone except his daughter to withdraw from Henry are not fully exposed.  It would seem consistent with the old worn cliché, that they ‘simply grew apart.’  

Student layabout Ken is a cheeky young lost soul, outwardly playful while on a deeper level more confused and cynical.  With his best friend Gaz, Ken shares his views on everything including family, girls, personal dreams and ideologies and racial politics.  Despite his jaunty demeanour there’s an evident measure of underlying resentment, instilled by a lifetime of being treated like an alien in his own home country. 

If there’s one principal protagonist, it must be Jen, dutiful daughter and older sister to Ken, with whom she shares a lovingly derisive rapport in typical brother-sister best-friend /worst-enemy fashion.  Ken is unable to empathise with Jen and Henry’s intrinsic bond, and with their apparent desire for Rose to return and for things to go back to the way they were. 

Meanwhile, Jen’s attempts to find more personal intimacy in the world of online dating don’t exactly pan out. 

In contrast, their alienated mother (and wife) Rose is most determined to fulfil her soul’s destiny.  As she either doesn’t really know or else is unwilling to divulge to her closest family just what that destiny may happen to be, all she does offer is a cryptic declaration of what she doesn’t want: “to be one of those ladies who play Mah Jong every Sunday.”

As Jen and Ken (mainly Jen) make arrangements for their family dinner-for-three (or four if Rose chooses to attend, having escaped to undisclosed locales some indeterminate period of time earlier), the story of Henry and Rose’s romance, marriage and subsequent trials and triumphs is told through numerous recollections and anecdotes.  Indeed, each Chen expresses their annoyance with the others’ failure to understand their own perspective, and ultimately they’re all right.  Hence, within their own complaints they’re also guilty of the self-same shortcoming. 

A great deal of humour is extracted from the ignorance of various local persons, who have no compunction addressing their resident Chinese neighbours as “your kind” and “you people”.  Attitudes range from the delightedly inquisitive shopkeeper, the deeply patronising lady from the local church, and the exploitative chauvinistic cop who can’t seem to relate to the concept of a poor Asian family.  Conversely, the comedic highlight is Jen’s outrageous ploy to exploit that same policeman’s prejudices by pretending to be a naïve Asian tourist with limited English.  

The only design credit is to Rachel Marlow for ‘Tech design’, presumably being the practical, unobtrusive lighting and the poignant contemporary soundtrack bookending the play’s three acts. The once-again-uncredited set design comprises the classic domestic elements that plays in the Musgrove frequently lend themselves to: assorted rugs, chairs, pictures, tables, books and cookware. 

After fifteen years of the local Lantern Festival centred in Albert Park, Aucklanders have come to recognise the enchantingly ornate ceremonial lanterns that signify the cultural celebrations of the Chinese New Year.  Given the festival, the title, and the cord strung tantalisingly above head-height right across the front of the stage, I confess to expecting a more spectacular climactic display than we ultimately get – possibly due to the Musgrove’s fire safety regulations?

Never mind, the usual abundance of splendid visuals will undoubtedly be lighting up the park this weekend.  Meanwhile, Lantern is intelligent, funny and moving, a solid example of the emerging genre of local Chinese theatre. 

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Right from the get-go the acting is ballsy and confident – in yer face and full of pace. Chye-Ling Huang and James Roque play off each other nicely and clearly believe and/or personally identify with the key themes and characters of the play. Coming from Malaysia where Chinese New Year is a big part of my culture, even though I’m of Indian/Sri Lankan descent, I was excited about the premise of this production. Like all festive celebrations Chinese New Year is a time where families get together, there is an attempt to settle old scores and wipe the slate clean. And that is most definitely the underlying storyline that underpins Lantern to its core. 

These themes provide amusing and poignant insight into being Chinese and being labelled Chinese in New Zealand – a country that calls itself multi-cultural but often doesn’t measure up in its throwaway comments, assumptions and well meant ignorance. Not that the narrative is whingey or complaining in anyway, in fact much to the contrary. A majority of the story comes from simple sibling rivalry and the craziness that all teenagers endure along with growing pains. [More] 

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