There are many layers to playwright Loong Man-hong’s Gangsters of Hong Kong.
On the surface, the play is about three men who are, in one way or the other, connected to the triads. On a deeper level, this original commission for this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival explores how the city is adjusting and adapting to changes since its return to China more than two decades ago.
Liu Mila (Tsoi Wan-wa) is a graduate student from China researching Hong Kong’s underworld for a thesis. She befriends a crime reporter Man Wing-fat (Pang Chun-nam) who, she hopes, will lead her to interviewing “real” triad members.
Liu is subsequently introduced to veteran policeman Tsui Sai-hoi (Chan Wing-chuen) and Leung Kong-fuk (Lee Chun-chow, also the play’s director) who joined the triads in his youth, and the history of these three men and their relationship begins to unravel.
Meanwhile, Liu and her two flat mates, Coco (Yip Lai-ka) and Karen (Fung Hunt-sze), start to receive mysterious threats that eventually turn violent.
Under Lee’s direction, the parallel storylines unfold neatly with steady pacing, though the two-hour long script could do with some tightening. No fat needs to be trimmed off the casting though, as each character is pivotal to the central narrative.
Liu serves as the thread that weaves the stories of Man, Tsui and Leung together; Leung represents the past and heydays of triad activities, especially in the 1980s and 1990s when extortion like “protection money” was rampant. Tsui symbolises that fine line between what is considered good and evil, while Man’s friendship with both men completes the delta connection.
Coco, a migrant from China, and her infatuated suitor Heung Chi-sing (Yeung Wai-lun) stand for the new Hong Kong and the many problems – such as high property prices – the young generation now faces.
Of the three lead actors, Pang is the least convincing but probably because his role as Man is not as clear cut as that of Tsui and Leung. What exactly is his backstory and how did he end up with a triad connection?
Lee and Chan – two of Hong Kong’s finest stage actors – are solid in their roles. It’s a real shame they only have one very brief scene together towards the show’s climatic end.
Gangsters of Hong Kong looks at the modern history of the triads with nostalgia, but without romanticising or glorifying its violent past (as some films have done). Like Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Loong’s work juxtaposes the old with the new: as the triad culture wanes, new forces from across the border emerge.
If Loong’s last work for the Hong Kong Arts Festival, A Floating Family: A Trilogy (2017), felt too stretched out and under-developed, Gangsters of Hong Kong is more precise in its storytelling with a more fleshed out cast of characters.
Gangsters of Hong Kong
Hong Kong City Hall Theatre
Reviewed: March 8, 2019. Until March 24
