Review: PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS fully establishes the search for this year's theme of the Hong Kong Arts Festival at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre

I have to confess that I had two misconceptions of PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS before I entered the theatre to see it, which makes my experience of viewing this two-hour theatre a surprising yet also predictable engagement based on this year's Hong Kong Arts Festival's theme: 'What's real to me'.

When I first saw the name Nature Theater of Oklahoma, the theatre that co-producing this theatre piece with En-Knap, I really thought that it was a theatre based in Oklahoma. Turns out, it is a title borrowed from Franz Kafka's AMERIKA, the theatre under the author's vision that 'has a place for everyone, everyone in his place!'

I also thought that it is going to be a theatre piece that explores the fail of the American Dream with the cowboy theme but in a more linear-narrative way.

It is another lesson for me to learn as a critic, that never underestimate or presume a production. It might be bigger than what you think it is.

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is another venture by the Hong Kong Arts Festival to expand the possibility and definition of a theatre space. Just like what I mention in my previous review of BOSCH DREAMS and DREAM AND DERANGEMENT, the theme of questioning what is real and not in the theatre is still intact in PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, with an even wilder approach on structure and narrative, resulting in an even more indirect expression of its message.

The show is structured in two parts. The first part shows mundane interactions between the 'characters' dressed as cowboys in a highly artificial setting of a western bar, parodying the 'spaghetti Western' films. It starts with a silent scene with a stereotypically Mexican bartender at the bar serving another cowboy. It lasts for several minutes with them pushing the glass of beer back and forth.

However, they do it so seriously and forcefully that beer spills every time when they push the glass across the table. That generates laughter in the audience by the theatrical comedy.

Later, we see more characters entering the scene, who are also 'spaghetti Westerns' stereotypes. The audience is also revealed that the cowboy in the first scene, facing upstage, is actually a female, rather than our usual perception of a male playing the role.

The characters interact with each other, but there is a balance between them talking to each other and them talking to themselves. Each character mostly delivers huge chunks of monologues that are about their own personal problems with humour. Their lines are highly stylised as if they are speaking in verse. Characters react to these movements, but they are not fully engaging. They violently punch each other occasionally, turning the movement into a brawl happening in a bar, which again, looks like a typical scene in a 'spaghetti Western'. Yet, these moments are highly artificial.

It is interesting to see how these juxtapositions of the images that we are familiar are not what it seems on stage: period Western characters talk about domestic struggles, yet without being honest to their emotions; brawling scenes of the Western genre are delivered in an 'unprofessional' way that exudes comedy (one actor's wig falls off from his head at one moment, revealing the truth that he is actually bald).

To be honest, it is hard for the audience to grasp what is going on in the first part of the show if they expect for a conventional narration. However, if one sticks to the theme of questioning what is real and unreal in the theatre, we can sense that the first part is an introduction to suggest the audience to try and see the theatre space in a different way by alienating themselves, examining the elements of absurdity that generates comedy.

In other words, we really need to ask ourselves, why do we laugh in the first part of such a mundane scenario? Is it because it has slapsticks that are really funny. If so, what is the reason that we find that funny? One of my observation is that it exposes the unrealness of theatre, that it scraps away from the illusion that leads the audience to think that the situations are real, that the theatre space is nothing but fakeness. That is why we laugh at mistakes and errors happening in the theatre, the absurdity and irony of that when theatre should be a place for an honest interaction of emotions through illusions.

But if so, one should ask if there is anything real behind this fakeness. Yes, there is. It is the message these characters covey in their dialogue, that these domestic dilemma and struggles are nothing but close to our own struggles. However, they are masked with high-brow language, the low-production value of the set, as well as the 'rusty' performances.

Everything for the first part is to establish a contrast to the second part which totally flips the piece upside down. The muted Mexican bartender in the background finally speaks up to cease another 'intense fight' between the other characters, addressing to the audience that he wants to pitch a movie right now. Suddenly, the other characters talk no more, while the bartender talks for the rest of the show, owning the centre stage.

The theme of one's false perception is still there as the audience would think that the bartender was only part of the ensemble, while the other characters were the main body. Little do we know that the star of the night is actually the one who we have overlooked.

Also, the narrative breaks from the previous structure. It is no longer delivered in a mundane way but very lively. The bartender uses his storytelling skills (without high-brow poetic lines) to reenact a story with details (unlike the dialogue in the first part that is more philosophical). It is about the dance group of En-Knap (the very dance group that produces this very show of PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS) going to the Iraq war zone to perform for both opponents.

Comparing to part one and part two, with the totally reversed styles, the audience starts to laugh not because of the slapsticks and mistakes but the real absurdity of the story, the extreme-illogical situation of the dance group being invited to the war zone to perform, and ended up with a tragically romantic, outlandishly sentimental and clichéd ending with characters die due to a sudden ambush.

Along the way, the dance group liaises and makes friend with a Red Bull truck driver who drives the group to locations. Violence exudes when they are performing, yet even though the situation is fatal (literally as members of the dance group are injured badly, or even got killed), they still continue to perform. After the tragedy, the dance group goes back to their hometown Ljubljana in Slovenia and is awarded for a Nobel Peace Prize due to this incident.

It is a highly-absurd fantasy with comic situations that one would not believe that it is real (which is also obvious that it is fiction), a tragedy told as a satirical farce. However, it is full of real names: En-Knap the real-life dance group; the names Ida, Ana, Gilles, Jeffery, and Lada which are all the real names of the performers on stage according to the programme; Red Bull, Nobel Peace Prize, the Iraq War, Ljubljana, Slovenia etc., these are real names and events that exist and has happened.

The bartender lucidly delivers his tale with energy and skills, and the rest of the ensemble supports the story reenactment without the intended slips in part one. Instead, they conceive a brilliant performance with accuracy. It turns out to be an engaging piece of physical theatre.

During the second part, the audience enjoys themselves with a brilliant farcical performance as they know what is told is laughable (unreal), yet their laughter actually acknowledges the situation's relatability. I can even see past the absurd situations and hear sobbings behind these words: the crying and questioning of the purpose of art when the world is in chaos, when the world is in demise that people reject art as a medium for peace, when art is only used as a branding for 'Peace' without really changing the world or changing one's mind.

Chinese novelist Cao Xueqin wrote a poem in the first chapter of his epic serial novel THE STORY OF THE STONE: 'Pages full of idle words / Penned with hot and bitter tears: / All men call the author fool; / None his secret message hears' (English version by David Hawkes after Cao). With a similar style to THE STORY OF THE STONE, a novel which also plays around the concept of muddling reality and fiction, I can sense that PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS also hides 'secret messages' behind its 'idle words'. Creators Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper might have deep sorrows as artists too, who, similar to Cao, have met challenges in their artistic career before.

I can recognise that in the piece even more so by the ending, that after the bartender finishes his story, he addresses to the audience that he will go to Chui Wah, a restaurant also in Central, and wait for any possible producer to produce his movie, as if his only way to keep doing art is to sell his work. This gag receives the biggest reaction from the audience with cheers and applause, signifying that most of the audience knows the absurdity of being successful in the art business is to sell, to be commercialised.

One might overlook the library on the highly-artificial unreal backdrop of the bar set, and if that is a conscious decision to put a library there, I think it strengthens of what I see in PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, that it is about storytelling, about finding happiness in dreams, in stories, in theatre, because we, who have lived for a while, recognise the pain in them.

The audience leaves with happiness as they have had an enjoyable night to laugh. However, as the title suggests, PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS seems to indicate that to pursuit for happiness, one simultaneously has to be constantly having sorrows, to really live life, recognising the pain in it, and laugh about it.

And this message is delivered in a calculated craft of the reversed-spectacular performances, the low-production level of the set and sound design, the eccentric choreography, as well as the writing, in order to keep the audience apart from the familiar world.

To show fiction means it has some realness to it, while to tell a thing is real means that the very thing is fiction. With this mechanism, the audience will start to think, and finally can actually recognise their own realness. For me, It is a creation only for the theatre that puts me in sorrow through laughter.

---

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS at Hong Kong City Hall Theatre
The 46th Hong Kong Arts Festival
Closed on 16th March 2018

To post a comment, you must register and login.