City Stage: Hong Kong Playwriting in English

The Overcoat

The Overcoat Sean Curran and Bonni Chan Based on Nikolai Gogol's celebrated and wickedly ironic tale of a lonely civil servant in prerevolutionary Russia, Theatre du Pif's highly physical and imagistic piece of stylized theatre reinterprets the satirical masterpiece for a modern and local audience. In the Pif version, the chronically sh y and perennially downtrodde n cop y clerk Akaky Akakyevich's characte r is faithfully depicted , but the implicit frame of reference of their version is the modem city such as Hong Kong rather than Gogol's nineteenth-century S t Petersburg. The plot, developed episodically from the highly idiosyncratic Gogol storytelling style, is fairly simple. Akaky, played with great skill and aplomb by Cunan himself, cannot affor d to buy a new overcoat when his old one starts to fall apart on him. However, he scrimps and saves to pay the uncompromising tailor Petrovich for a brand new coat, after the latter refuses to mend his already badly worn and over-patched 'dressing-gown ' of a coat. After attendin g a party given by his colleagues, at which he earns some grudging respect and recognition on account of his elegant new overcoat, which transforms his sense of identity, Akaky is mugged on the unforgiving street s of the city as he returns home late. Advised by his landlady an d colleagues to go the police the next day, he makes the unfortunate mistake of acting on their advice and goes straight to the top. His terrifying encounter with the unnamed Important Person leaves him physically and mentally scaned. His health goes into a rapid decline and he dies. However, his ghost starts to haunt the streets of St Petersburg, and though stealing the overcoats of many worthy citizens, is not satisfied until he meets the Important Person and relieves him of his very grand, fur-lined overcoat . After this incident, the ghost is never seen again. Although an element of satire is retained in director Bonni Chan's and main actor Cunan's theatrical concept, the wonderful comic irony of Gogol's storytelling voice is wisely sacrificed . Instead of trying to reproduce the whimsical tongue-in-cheek literary effects o f the original, the small group of actors opts for concrete visual evocation of the significant events of the story in a very physical style, which highlights the absurd and often sunea l atmosphere in which Akaky's tale of woe is played out. The opening scenes, which are excerpted here, establish this air of the slightly grotesque and suneal strongly by utilizing a farcical and stylized acting technique, accentuatin g an d exaggeratin g movemen t an d stag e grouping s t o hint a t th e absurdity of the events that befall the hapless Akaky. The chill, almost malevolent winds of the city are evoked brilliantly in a short imaginative cameo and the absurd farce of the chase sequence in the scene at the tailor's, in which Akaky tries to leave his old coat for repair, is slickly timed and gives the audience a taste of the comic delights of the tale before the more sombre, but still mocking, conclusion to the tale. In a departure from Gogol' s nanative, Du Pif cleverly introduce the Important Person in the second scene admiring himself in the minor, but still dressed in his underwear, and practising his intimidatory phrases, 'How dare you! Are you awar e who you're talkin g to ? Don't yo u know m y principles? Strictness , strictness , strictness!' This little coup de theatre, which effectively bring s out the pattern o f contras t underlying the themes of the story, as with Cunan's utterly convincing tugging at an imaginary overcoat throughout the play, epitomizes the group's skilful deploymen t of mime and other The Overcoat 23 9 non-naturalistic devices to enhance the theatricality of their work. One semi-improvised scene, which is not included in this extract, involves workmen speakin g in colloquial Cantonese , contrasting nicely with the English used in other scenes, and provoking laughs among the many Cantonese speakers in the audience. The play deservedl y garnere d a n Edinburgh Festiva l Critic s Choic e Award for 2001, winning a five-star recommendation in a notoriously competitive and difficult festival in which to achieve recognition. It had earlier been highly praised by critics in Hong Kong, who noted the stimulating and judicious orchestration of image, movement and text which is...