Theatre review: Happy Valley unleashes punk-fuelled frustration on Hong Kong chaos
Derek Chan blends projections, politics, and music across genres in tribute to the home country he can’t return to
Derek Chan in Happy Valley. Photo by Pedro Augusta Meza
Firehall Arts Centre presents rice & beans theatre’s Happy Valley to June 4
CANTONESE PUNK ROCK SONGS meet projections and political outcry in theatre artist Derek Chan’s furious and frenzied one-man lament for living in exile— and for the Hong Kong “that never was and never will be”.
Inhabiting an anarchic stage strewn with empty booze bottles, discarded papers, and instant noodles, the artist couches his exploration of the home country he can never return to as a kind of chaotic concert. Between songs that draw on Canto-pop, cheesy piano lounge, and spoken word, Chan works in personal reflections and history lessons. Occasionally, he also becomes Uncle Chan, a cranky old guy who gives the show generational context, calling out hypocrisy around Hong Kong, complaining about microwaved tea, and teaching us how to swear in Cantonese. In imagery and text stretched across the screens that flank the stage, you’ll learn how to say “1997” (the year of the handover to China—or the “Apocalypse”, by Chan’s calendar) in Cantonese, see familiar video scenes from Tiananmen Square and the Umbrella March, and watch English subtitles pile up and flood offscreen when Chan unleashes his angst in Cantonese. (Videos are designed by Andie Lloyd.)
It is a chaotic journey, but chaos is probably the only rational response to the insanity that Hong Kong has endured, from British rule (“Up yours, Maggie T”) to the hollow promises of “one country, two systems” to the iron fist of oppression that now sees pro-democracy activists jailed. The situation is a mess, and so are Chan’s feelings around his dislocation—a mix of grief, guilt, bitterness, and unbridled rage. So it makes sense that the stage is in upheaval and the ideas explode like shrapnel.
Throughout, Chan is riveting and vulnerable as he pours his heart out, swinging between moods and musical genres. Several moments are deeply moving. In one affecting moment of connection on opening night, Hong Kong-born members of the audience started singing a famous freedom pop song with Chan, then spontaneously started waving their cellphone flashlights in the dark. As Chan wryly notes, it’s not a song you’d be able to sing in Hong Kong today.
So what is Happy Valley? Historically speaking, it’s the race course where the Concert for Democracy in China happened in 1989 in support of the Tiananmen Square student protesters a week before the massacre. But in his songs, it also alternates between a crude sexual term and a cheery-sounding fairy-tale place that can never exist. “Would things have been different if everybody stayed the same way as our memories promised?” he sings in a rare wistful moment.
Chan is a gifted physical comedian, and there are many funny parts, but for proof of how deadly serious this all is, look at the program credits, where half the creative team is listed as Anonymous. In many ways, Chan is yelling, swearing, and singing for a country that’s slowly disappearing—or, more accurately, is actively being erased.
Those who haven’t visited or lived in Hong Kong might miss a few of the specific references here, but what comes across clearly is a wakeup call against growing apathy for what’s going down across the Pacific—as we’re “Tik Tok-ing away”, as Chan puts it. “I fucking dare you to tell it to my face/That any of this meant any fucking thing.” See this powerful, and utterly uncategorizable, show, and decide for yourself.
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