3 Additional performances
21 and 28 Mar 3:00pm
24 Mar 8:00pm
Booking starts from 5 Dec at URBTIX

A New Play by Wong Wing-sze
Directed by Lee Chun-chow and Wong Wing-sze

Emily starts a new job at a legal firm specialising in divorce. She walks into the office and walks straight into the marriage of her bosses...

Multi-award winning playwright Wong Wing-sze dissects the equivocations behind marriage break-ups in The Truth About Lying.

Actor-director Lee Chun-chow leads a glittering cast of Hong Kong theatre veterans in this thought-provoking new play.

Commissioned and produced by the Hong Kong Arts Festival

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Written by     Wong Wing-sze
Directed by   Wong Wing-sze and Lee Chun-chow

Cast             Lee Chun-chow, Law Koon-lan, Wong Wai-chi,
                    Leung Cho-yiu and Siu Mei-Gwan

Divorce, Hong Kong Style: The Truth About Lying
by Gigi Chang

"If your wife asks, I'll tell her with a straight face that I slept with you. Spur her on – so she'd care about you." Emily tells her boss, a middle-aged lawyer specialising in divorce cases. His wife also happens to be Emily's boss – the other partner of the law firm. The Truth About Lying exposes the myriad of equivocations that haunt romantic relationships and break-ups. This new play, commissioned and produced by the Hong Kong Arts Festival from prolific young writer Wong Wing-sze, will receive its premiere in March 2010.

Wong wrote her first play eight years ago, but it all happened by chance. Trained as an actress, she candidly admits that she started to write because of money. "One day, I saw this advert for a playwriting competition, for once it wasn't offering book tokens, but an actual cash prize – $8,000 as well. Like all budding actors, I was broke. So I went home and hammered something out. And I won. But I still act, you know."

That was 2001. Wong continues to "hammer out" sparklingly funny but darkly philosophical plays. Since then, she has written 16 full-length stage plays plus film and television screenplays that have garnered multiple awards, secured strong box office takings and received rave reviews locally and abroad. As Lee Chun-chow, the co-director and lead actor of The Truth About Lying puts it, her writing is characterised by a "special ability to draw out the absurdity of common things and daily life, of relationships and humanity – to be able to just stand back and observe, even if it's something very personal".

It was working with Lee that brought the play about. Lee was directing Wong in her semi-autobiographical one-woman show, My Grandmother's Funeral. Working together for long hours and in close proximity, Wong came to realise that they had very different notions of marriage and divorce. She began to ponder on what causes such a drastic change in attitude. Was it because she is single and Lee is married? Did it only take two decades to cause a paradigm shift in marriage, for it to become a mere legal label?

Wong carries off the weighty subject with wry humour and insight. "Well, I always like writing about people and relationships, and about things I know about. My parents are divorced. It was big news when I was at primary school – all hush-hush, a major event. Classmates pointed at me and whispered about it. I wasn't supposed to let anyone know. Then divorce became commonplace, insignificant, even cheap – you only need a few hundred dollars to sort it out." She continues in a curious mix of off-handedness and joviality, "We're standing at a breaking point, with a society full of only children raised by single parents who are often only children too. They become unable to sustain relationships because their only belief is the self."

Compared to Wong's other plays, the language of The Truth About Lying is very parred down. This is linked to the protagonists' choice of profession. "The main characters are lawyers and legal language is very precise, detached. It lacks emotions. Yet in divorce, you're dealing with intense feelings. It's impossible to be completely clinical about that. So, there is much repressed which creates huge tension, waiting to explode." Wong enlisted help from lawyer friends to achieve this linguistic iciness. Meanwhile, her actress's instinct taps into the true feelings of characters even when they are camouflaged by words. She also acknowledges the influence of Harold Pinter and David Mamet, whom she studied at drama school. Their revolutionary signature style, where a few words convey much meaning, guided her writing.

The play's title in Chinese means "a divorce, Hong Kong style" which is rather different from the English one. Is there a message coded in the discrepancy between the two titles? "I came up with the English title first. I want the audience to think about the title after the play. What does it mean? Which are the truths? Where are the lies? Because everyone has a different view on lying. The older we get, the less honest we become. It's not as acceptable to ask outright anymore. To be "polite", "well-mannered" and "mature", we tiptoe around all the time – essentially not being truthful. I really don't like that. That's why the play is called The Truth About Lying – if you tell the truth, no one is ever going to listen." However, it is most certain that Wong will be heard, especially with a cast that commands the most sought-after stage talents of Hong Kong today.

Gigi Chang is the English Editor of FestMag.