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Six Characters in Search of an Author

Posted: 23 Jun 2010

Arts Centre, McAulay Studio

Wednesday 23-Sunday 27

This fortnight, prepare yourself for some metafictional fun with this English production of Six Characters in Search of an Author, co-presented by Stylus Productions and the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and Macau as part of the Italian Quality Lifestyle Festival. Adapted into English by Rupert Goold and Ben Powell in 2008, the 1921 classic by Nobel Prize winning Sicilian playwright Luigi Pirandello will here be performed by a multi-cultural cast and directed by an Egyptian with a passion for Theatre of the Absurd.

Confident that the modern spin on the play will make it more relatable, director Ahmed El-Alfy hopes that it will provoke questions whilst providing good entertainment. “This is not a normal play,” he says. “This play is rarely staged because people feel it’s too old and hard to relate to. But I like challenges, and I like the idea of challenging reality on stage instead of on film.”

In this version, a group of film producers working on a documentary about euthanasia are interrupted by six characters, whose seemingly inane babbling encourages The Producer character to consider them insane. As the play progresses, reality and fantasy intertwine. And it comes as little surprise that, in El-Alfy’s presentation, he has cast a real-life documentary producer to play The Producer, a real-life editor as The Editor, and a real-life executive as The Executive. It looks to be very much a case of art imitating life, and in the director’s words, “in one way or another, someone will relate to everything that’s happening in the play.”

Heidi Yeung

Tickets: 2734 9009; www.urbtix.hk.SiteCatalyst code version: H.17. Copyright 1997-2008 Omniture, Inc. More info available at http://www.omniture.com

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End SiteCatalyst code version: H.17.