Before the lights go up on furniture packed up for moving, we hear the sound of western songs like Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ sung in Chinese, signalling this is going to be a play about crossing cultures.
A Chinese elder son, Lim, faces the audience giving us an obituary of his 72 year-old mother – she was kind, she was a wife and mother, ‘a hard-working immigrant’ who arrived in England with her husband and two children. She worked as a dishwasher and seamstress and ran a small supermarket. In time, that became three big supermarkets and they were a successful immigrant family.
Now her three children are assembled in her decrepit old Chinese house to evaluate it for renovation or sale to the government. The avuncular older brother Lim is keen to do the house up, resisting the completion of the government’s ‘property condition report’ which will show its poor condition, reflecting the shaky state of the family.
Lim and his younger sister, Vanessa were the children brought to England after a childhood in China. Their brother, the time-urgent Ethan is eagerly waiting for his plane out of there. Born in England, he is not, he insists, an immigrant, ‘I am the son of immigrants.’ He has no attachments to the house, ‘I don’t identify with the culture and I don’t identify with the Chinese’. His sentiments oppose Lim’s sentimental view of the family, while Vanessa is conflicted. As they sort through the things left in the house, the two older siblings find a book they used to read when they were little, and a plate they used to eat off. The memories though are different for each.
The three have not met for a year and gradually arguments begin to develop reflecting the dilemma that so often happens during times of family deaths. The row inevitably turns to money. Vanessa has, Lim thinks, made a mess of her life by giving up a good job to follow her dreams. Their younger brother, with the benefit of private education, has done well for himself. Both, Lim thinks, have benefited from his sacrifices in life, which give him a superior say in what happens to their mother’s house. He says he wants to keep the house to keep the family together, ‘I am only doing this for our collective good’, he says. Vanessa says he fears losing his control over them, ‘giving more does not give you greater rights.’ Any family can recognise this sort of argument.
All the time the house, represented by the packed-up furniture and a sandy floor, is falling into ruin while they try and save trinkets from it. At one point two characters are literally lying on the floor. The black and white video projection of the actors onto a screen behind them emphasises the dual nature of their lives: both in China and out of it.
This is a moving portrayal of the immigrant dilemma: how far do you get away from your roots before you find you no longer have them?
Finally, I realise should have paid more attention to the intricacies of Chinese property law, which I thought were just background, but in fact are relied on for a plot point. I wasn’t entirely sure where we were in the first minutes, in fact the house is in China though the references are to England, I suppose replicating the confusion of the characters as to where they belong, but it challenged me too.
Although it is always good to see a musician onstage in a show, I am unsure of what the music added to reflect the action and the Chinese theme.
Playwright: Xinyu Lu
Cast: Kevin Ip, Chen Xu, Yijia Gong
Duration: 60 minutes
Until 10 September 2026 at other locations, part of SE Fest 26