| The Eccentricities
of a Nightingale
Hong Kong 2003
Tennessee Williams story of the spinster
Alma Winemiller, in love since childhood with John, the boy next
door.
The title was thought dull: nightingales aren't a Chinese image.
The Cantonese title, Love
Me for an Hour, Please
was based on the moment when Alma suggests to John he take her to
a hotel to make love. He balks, she is persuasive. John explains
that whatever love-making there might be, it can’t last more
than an hour.
"Give me the hour and I’ll make a lifetime of it,"
Alma says.
In an interview given in 1972, Williams said "I think the character
I like most is Miss Alma … You see, Alma went through the same
thing that I went through – from puritanical shackles to, well,
complete profligacy."
There were two casts in Hong Kong: one with
a man playing Alma. He was not in drag, he was playing her soul.
"Shine on Harvest Moon"
began each performance, one of many period American songs sung in
Cantonese.
The townspeople first appeared as shadows, in later scenes they
projected shadows.
The production rehearsed and ran during the so-called Hong Kong
SARS epidemic.
Above, Alma (to the young salesman): There are living
organisms -- only visible through a microscope --
that live and die and are succeeded by several generations in
an hour, or less than an hour, even ...
In the photos below the Reverend Winemiller
berates his daughter.
The thing for you to give up is your affectations,
Alma, your little put-on mannerisms...
The Hong Kong Repertory Theatre
has, for 26 years, presented a varied program of Western classics,
modern Asian drama, and historic Asian literature all performed
in Cantonese. The HK Rep's current artistic director is the visionary
Frederic Mao -- he created the role of the Emperor in the original
Pacific Overtures on Broadway. |