Hong Kong Repertory Theatre Reveals 2024-25 Season Lineup

The Hong Kong Repertory Theatre has announced its 2024-25 Season with the theme “Decoding life's mysteries, probing into the secrets of our true selves”. With a focus on solid dramatic texts, whether original or adapted, we are determined to put on theatre “in the moment” and examine what is timeless with the audiences, continuing to light up the stage.

HKRep Artistic Director Poon Wai Sum says, “Life is filled with mysteries, many inexplicable and exhausting. People like us may not be able to live like Zhuangzi, a philosopher who understood the world and lived a life beyond our mortal realm. Some may ask for their fortunes at the Wong Tai Sin Temple, others visit Che Kung Temple in search of blessings: that all can work. But we believe in theatre. Theatre cannot decipher snippets of fortune-telling cards, but good theatre can decode life's mysteries, providing metaphors between the lines as we find our true selves on stage amidst lights and shadows.”

Programme Highlights of the 2024-25 Season:

• Scapin in Jiānghú, Chap. 2024 – Receiving 7 nominations from the Hong Kong Drama Awards
• The Top Restaurant – Returning to the stage after a sold-out run of the premiere production
• Ambiguous – Award-winning production in Hong Kong and the mainland China
• After Life – Hong Kong premiere of the stage adaptation of Hirokazu Kore-eda's classic work
• Lumination of the Forgotten by Bonni Chan and Poon Wai Sum, Christmas-limited production The Absolute Task, a beguiling variation on Shakespeare's classic The Tamed and the Tempted
• Mainland China Tour – The Isle, Ambiguous and The Top Restaurant
• Black Box Productions and the brand-new Text Testing Zone

Main Stage Productions

Lumination of the Forgotten

HKRep Artistic Director Poon Wai Sum wrote five plays comprising his Insect Series from the 1990s and early 2000s: The Cockroach that Flies like a Helicopter, Cricket in My Life, Spider in Meditation, The Rising Ants and To Kill or To Be Killed. For this production, he deconstructs and assembles the texts anew, remoulding these small yet vibrant “insects”, casting them as metaphors tracing the experience Hong Kong has weathered. Directed by Bonni Chan, Co-Artistic Director of Theatre du Pif, this production guides the audience as they amble among words and images both real and illusory, capturing the shadows of ordinary Hong Kong people, gathering fragments of lives long overlooked. (18th May to 2nd June 2024 at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre)

After Life

After death, one must stop briefly at a transit station en route to Heaven. Everyone must select a precious memory that the guides help revive. Looking back, some are filled with regret, others rack their brains, while several recall their loved ones. Perhaps this process is like collecting fragments of the past and retracing the path of life? Award-winning British playwright Jack Thorne adapted renowned Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda's classic After Life for the stage. Assistant Artistic Director Fong Chun Kit and Kwok Wing Hong collaborate again to wield their stage magic, going through life and death with the audience as they revisit a treasure trove of memories identifying what is truly important. This production is sponsored by Suicide Prevention Services. (13th to 28th July 2024 at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre)

Ambiguous

Stay-at-home husband Chan Chi Yung and housewife Wang Xie meet at a chance encounter outside a kindergarten. Every day they enjoy casual chats, and a faintly discernible yet ambiguous relationship develops. Premiered in 2021, Ambiguous was awarded Best Play at the 30th Hong Kong Drama Awards and Best Playwright of the Year at the 2023 Shanghai One Drama Awards. With the launch of “HKRep on Screen” last year, Ambiguous was among the selected productions shown in cinemas not only in Hong Kong but also in Beijing, Guilin and Shenzhen, winning much praise.  The Hong Kong and Mainland China Tour of this production is title sponsored by Shun Hing Group. (13th to 22nd September 2024 at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre)

Scapin in Jiānghú, Chap. 2024

The Dragon Slay and Tiger Crush clans have been sworn enemies for generations, at loggerheads for a century with no clear winner or loser. On the day of their annual battle, the two clan leaders suddenly announce arranged marriages for their sons (marrying the respective daughters of their former enemies). The two young men are devastated over their imminent weddings, lamenting they cannot choose their true love. House servant Scapin pities the two young men, thus offering to save them from their plights with countless devious plots. Adapted from Molière's Les Fourberies de Scapin, Scapin in Jiānghú, Chap. 2023 is chock-full of comedic elements. When the play premiered in 2023, the theatre was filled with uproarious laughter. By popular demand, Scapin returns to Jiānghú this season. (27th September to 6th October 2024 at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre)

The Absolute Task

In a small town in the arctic region of Siberia, winter temperatures drop to 70 degrees below freezing. A group of Hong Kong women, coming from different backgrounds, pledge to travel there to deliver Christmas presents to the town's inhabitants. To withstand such extreme weather, they must receive training taxing both their physique and determination. What motivates these women, making them so impassioned? Before the Christmas season, HKRep Artistic Director Poon Wai Sum pens a brand-new script The Absolute Task specifically to highlight the company's actresses. The Special Force will deliver unusual Christmas presents to the audience, at the same time inviting us all to look deep into our hearts. (7th to 15th December 2024 at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre)

The Top Restaurant

After the owner of Fujude — the most renowned duck restaurant in Beijing — retires from ill-health, his two lacklustre sons run the business to the ground. In comes Lu Mengshi who turns the establishment around. When the brothers witness the rising tide, they vow to fight Lu in regaining their rightful share! Hailed as a theatrical masterpiece of contemporary realism, the premiere production of The Top Restaurant by the HKRep in 2022 enjoyed a sold-out run. Soon after, it received Best Director, Best Leading Actor and Best Supporting Actor at the Chinese Theatre Awards. The Top Restaurant returns this season, welcoming again former HKRep principal actor and Golden Horse “Best Leading Actor” Tse Kwan Ho, who joins playwright He Jiping and director Roy Szeto — a reunion of the veritable dream team! The National Tour of this production is title sponsored by China CITIC Bank International, while performances in Hong Kong are sponsored by Chow Sang Sang. (18th to 26th January 2025 at Hong Kong Cultural Centre Grand Theatre)

The Tamed and the Tempted

Shek Tong Tsui in the 20th century was a place festooned with colourful decorations, a place to satisfy carnal desires. Men and women test each other, each doing the utmost to “tame” the other. But who's the customer and who provides a service? Are these people satisfying sexual cravings or seeking love? Is money the only motivation to curry favour? The Taming of the Shrew is Shakespeare's renowned comedy addressing such topics as love and money, how people tame each other, and how desire has the power to tame. Poon Wai Sum reimagines this story about the sexes in a brothel, examining the characters therein. He invites veteran theatre professional Lee Chun Chow as director to dissect that unique place where sex is the trade. (15th to 30th March 2025 at Hong Kong Arts Centre Shouson Theatre)

Black Box Productions

The Spoon

A graphic designer burdened with debt has no other recourse but to become a hitman. His client leaves him with only a spoon, and his target is his long-lost university classmate Wing. One needs money, the other wants to remain alive, so the two decide to “be creative” with a single spoon! This production premiered in a 2023 sold-out run in the HKRep Black Box, with theatregoers responding with non-stop laughter. This season we bring an even more refined production, which is also one of the “Expo Programmes” of Hong Kong Performing Arts Expo. (4th to 18th October 2024 at HKRep Black Box)

Sleep

Couples of different ages move into a new house. They don't acknowledge each other but seem to be aware of each other. The house recedes into a haze, time freezes before dissipating into thin air; people's coming and going make up a rhythm akin to hesitancy in pillow talk. Just when the past and future confront each other in the same space… “he” arrives. Sleep is Jon Fosse's second play HKRep puts on stage which will be directed by Assistant Artistic Director Yau Ting Fai again, who spearheaded Winter a few seasons ago. Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 with his works — poetic and picturesque — inviting the audience to extend their imagination. (21st to 30th March 2025, HKRep Black Box)

Text Testing Zone Productions

As a new platform launched in this season, the inaugural Text Testing Zone is spearheaded by Assistant Artistic Director Lau Shau Ching. It is a groundbreaking initiative providing a unique opportunity for up-and-coming playwrights to put on new works with simple staging and technical support.  The aim is to test the quality of their creations while offering a platform for revising and refining their scripts. 

Vacant Possession

At a handover of a tiny rental flat, everything goes haywire! On the final day of the lease, the owner, old and new renters, real estate agent and squatter crowd in the space. No one gives way and during the tussle a workman accidentally falls from the building and a single tooth somehow hurls itself inside the flat! All of a sudden, this space becomes an “inauspicious abode”, upending everyone's plans… Does this tooth signify crisis or opportunity? Following his Twists and Turns and The Bucket, both emanating from The Open Platform, playwright Hui Jim transforms his own experience into dramatic text, unearthing stories behind a rental property in which the word “inauspicious” reverberates. (10th to 18th May 2024 , HKRep Black Box)

Stay with the Flow

Born in the 1950s, Lam Chor Tak has lived his life on a fishing boat off the Aberdeen coastline. In his youthful years, salted fish was the means to make a living; Tin Hau Festival feasts included elaborate contests and giant flower plaques. Decades later, Lam switches to fish farming and local tourism. The times have changed; Chor Tak insists on living on board and cooking on his vessel. Is he resisting progress or just choosing the good and insisting on it? Following his play The Ward, playwright Lee Wai Lok takes inspiration from local Tanka people, examining their dilemma whether to move ashore or continue their floating lives, etching an intimate portrait and probing the identity of Hong Kong's own boat people. (24th May to 2nd June 2024 , HKRep Black Box)

In Between

Amid post-war Japan's unprecedented economic recession, the Japanese National Railways (JNR) was faced with a huge deficit leading to large-scale layoffs meeting with protests from the workers' union. The union, the government, United States Forces Japan, representatives from business circles and JNR personnel gather in a tense meeting. Tetsujin Shimoyama has just begun his tenure as the inaugural JNR director. He finds himself at a crossroad. Should he stop the trains that are about to derail? Or let the trains run, tearing the future apart? Following his play Three Impaired Monkeys, playwright Ming Lai returns to the topic of humanity and tells a story from a foreign land. (8th to 15th March 2025, HKRep Black Box).

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