In Shanghai, expat Julian puts through a call to his estranged wife, Marie, a charity worker in southern India, to tell her their daughter has killed herself after a failed love affair.
In Pondicherry, Marie gives an interview to a TV company while a local fisherman mourns his own child, lost in the 2004 tsunami. Back in Shanghai, a young rent boy meets a Swedish actress who is in town to play Miss Julie opposite a husband who no longer wants to perform on stage. Lost daughters, realigning relationships and cross-cultural confusions are the meat of Re-Orientations, the third part in a trilogy of plays devised by intercultural, multimedia company Border Crossings.
At its very best it's impressive, bold in ambition and fluid – like Robert Lepage on a teeny budget. There are exquisite moments of feathery movement, when the actors' hands flutter like damaged birds. There's a terrific scene milking the comedy of cultural confusion in which Julian, who has slept with Sammy, is given a taste of Chinese hospitality by the boy's mother. In fact, the show is often best when it takes itself less seriously: lushly scored suicide scenes prove less effective than a gentle comedy of manners on an aeroplane.
But the show is scuppered by its own unevenness – both in the dramaturgy (no less than three fingers in the pie, according to the programme) and the acting, which ranges from excellent to dire. The Miss Julie strand of proceedings is particularly awkward, and most of the characters and relationships, although clearly defined – Julian is a cold fish, Marie a corporate bitch and Johan a buffoon – never develop. It feels like walking into the middle of a story.
