A number of shows in the just-concluded 53rd Hong Kong Arts Festival was about revisiting literary classics — some of which seem especially relevant today. Chitralekha Basu reports.

Coincidentally, the new Netflix drama Adolescence and the Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF)-produced Crime and Punishment launched around the same time in March. Both tell stories of discontented young males who are prepared to kill in order to feel validated. In HKAF’s Cantonese drama, adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel, impoverished former university student Edward Lai (Leung Tin-chak) strikes down a crafty old moneylender — as well as the latter’s sister, who turns up at the scene of crime by mischance — believing that extraordinary men like him are entitled to remove the obstacles in their path, never mind the collateral damage.

Evidently, Dostoevsky’s classic has aged well, and perhaps become especially relevant at this time. The murderer protagonist in the HKAF-commissioned play invokes world leaders who continue to profit by orchestrating wars that snuff out innocent lives. They are his heroes.

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“The present-day resonance for me is with a generation of young people who believe they have no future in a brutally unequal world,” says Phillip Breen, playwright and associate director on the production. “They see might — military and financial — rather than justice, shaping the world. So the choice for many as they see it is to become mighty or die trying. And if the means of getting there are immoral so be it.”

For all his posturings to the contrary, Edward is conflicted by the moral implications of his vile deed. The existential debate taking place inside his head is dramatized in the form of conversations between him and the investigating officer, Arthur Tung (Ben Yuen), who puts on the mask of a cool surrogate father figure during the interrogations, until he doesn’t.

On stage, a couple of rusty metal doors with cutwork and trellised patterns typical of modest Hong Kong residences are reconfigured from time to time to indicate a change of scene, conjuring up a retro feel that also belongs in the present.

Eclectic mix

A number of shows in HKAF 2025 — which wrapped on Sunday — were about revisiting literary classics. Amsterdam Sinfonietta and ISH Dance Collective joined forces to create The Waste Land, featuring orchestral music, hip-hop and aerial dance inspired by TS Eliot’s epic poem The Wasteland (1922). Iranian composer Farokhzad Layegh scores the music, incorporating extracts from Stravinsky, Arvo Pärt, Michael Nyman and Fazil Say.

Harnessed acrobats treat walls like floors in The Waste Land, walking up or dancing around on them, ignoring the pull of gravity. On the ground below, hip-hop performers choreographed by Marco Gerris express the emotions felt by those still nursing the wounds of World War I, in keeping with the spirit of Eliot’s poem — transiting from chaos to trauma to the return of a semblance of order.

British director Emma Rice has adapted Emily Bronte’s 1847 gothic romance, Wuthering Heights, into a play with songs. For her the male protagonist Heathcliff’s first appearance in the novel — a child listlessly wandering around the Liverpool docks when he is found by the kindhearted Mr Earnshaw, who adopts him — resonates with the plight of children of asylum seekers, washing up on Europe’s shores from time to time. The director has used puppets for the younger versions of the characters, in keeping with “my signature childlike lens” for “puppets delight, surprise and engage the imagination”.

Wuthering Heights pays homage to, and also spoofs, song-and-dance routines — from ballroom dancing to rock and roll. In a somewhat literal interpretation of the literary conceit that the rough and rugged Yorkshire moors is a character in Bronte’s novel, Rice has cast an acting ensemble to play The Moors.

“I took inspiration from ancient Greek tragedies and looked for moments when The Moors could comment on the action. I wanted the music to be as rich and layered as The Moors themselves and for the movement to be grounded and rooted, as if the actors were stuck in the ground and shouting to the Gods,” Rice says.

The flouncy patchwork skirts worn by The Moors are much like their robust performance — the music and movements coming across as both primal and contemporary. “We took inspiration for the costume from women’s folk art across the world,” Rice says. “Each skirt has been embroidered as if life and wisdom have passed through the generations using needle and thread.”

Low-tech wonders

HKAF also commissioned the spectacular 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, adapted from Jules Verne’s 1871 sci-fi novel by the French duo Christian Hecq and Valerie Lesort. Performed in Mandarin and featuring star actors from Shanghai such as Jeff Bao Jianfeng and Ren Shan, the production that takes viewers on an underwater adventure with stunning vistas is surprisingly low tech. The beautiful, and bizarre, sea creatures that are seen peeping at the submarine’s porthole are in fact handheld puppets, maneuvered by the actors.

The technology may be old but the production’s sensibilities are modern. Captain Nemo tells off a fellow voyager for making fun of a tribal islander’s lack of refinement and reiterates his complaint about man’s insensitivity toward nature and its non-human inhabitants.

Thunderstorm, by Beijing Liliuyi Theatre Studio and Hippolytus by National Theatre of Greece-Athens have similar plots while displaying vastly different production aesthetics. Based on Euripides’ 428 BC tragedy, the Katerina Evangelatosdirected Hippolytus turns the spotlight on Goddess Aphrodite — reimagined as an anime warrior girl, wielding a camera instead of a gun. A mischievous soul, she arouses Queen Phaedra’s incestuous longings for her stepson, Hippolytus. Misunderstandings follow. Innocent lives are lost. And King Theseus is left t with his son’s blood on his hands as a result.

Thunderstorm, which revisits a 1933 play by Cao Yu, is a much slower and far more stylized tale of multiple incestuous acts set in a moral universe where the sins of the father return to haunt the next generation. William Chang’s minimalist set — awash in a claustrophobic tone of electric blue — and Hu Jun’s virtuoso performance as the family patriarch are particularly memorable in a story that can seem a bit dated.

Cantonese Opera originals

HKAF 2025 saw the launch of the first series of performances from a three-year Cantonese Opera-focused program that seeks to preserve and showcase the nuances of the traditional art form, train a new generation of performers and cultivate an audience. Cantonese Opera stalwart Yuen Siu-fai serves as the program’s artistic director. The 79-year-old appeared as the generous ruler Gao Xingzhou, who is persuaded by his nephew to sacrifice his life in order to obtain the release of the latter’s parents in Retrieving the Head at Gao Ping Guan, presented as part of Formulaic Plays Excerpts.

Cathy Cheng, program manager at HKAF, points out that the Formulaic Plays pieces are “rooted in the Zhongyuan dialect, or old Mandarin, as was customary before the shift to vernacular Cantonese in the 1910s and 1920s”, and that the content “was carefully reconstructed from fragmented scripts and oral traditions, reflecting the meticulous research and dedication behind this project”.

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Cheng reveals that Yuen is something of a crusader for seeking out lost scripts.

“He is a passionate advocate for performing in the original Zhongyuan dialect, a practice that has largely faded over the years. Yuen believes that mastering these ancient forms refines a performer’s craft, as it demands exceptional vocal power, emotional depth, and precise physicality to convey the story without elaborate scenery or effects. His efforts to revive these traditions — such as through his meticulous research into lost scripts — showcase his commitment to preserving Cantonese Opera’s historical integrity.

Contact the writer at basu@chinadailyhk.com