The Year of the Cello at Theatre Passe Muraille
Photo by Dahlia Katz
A great downpour beats on the roof of an early twentieth century Hong Kong apartment. It’s lonely, sitting here, watching water that once sat in the South China Sea rush through the city’s bustling streets like a wave of grief for all those lost in a recent wave of Bubonic Plague.
Or it must’ve been for Wen (Rong Fu), who lost both her family and the love of her life, Li-An, to the disease. Speaking to the audience, Wen gives a rushed account of her life story as it connects to a vibrant memory of her and Li-An listening to a cellist perform on a ferry. The Year of the Cello manifests this memory physically, through a live musician — The Cellist (Brendan Rogers, sometimes) — who plays Bach cello suites and new compositions by Njo Kong Kie but does not speak.
The production flexes the capabilities of TPM’s newly renovated Bob Nasmith Innovation Backspace by using a super-wide horizontal stage configuration. There are only two rows of seats. It also makes use of the space’s balcony, allowing director Marjorie Chan to play with vast gulfs of distance: in one moment, The Cellist and Wen are intimately close; in the next, they are worlds apart. These extreme spatial dynamics conjure a desperate, lonely yearning.
While the subject matter — the loss of loved ones — is cold and uninviting, The Year of the Cello treats it with immense warmth. The Cellist’s music wraps Wen in a cocoon of comfort; and though there is a bed on stage, his presence indicates that Wen is in a kind of memory space. Designer Echo Zhou’s evocative lighting furthers this warmth: bathed in amber, the space glows with the comfort of a blazing hearth. Though it is wet outside, it is dry in here.
The show meditates on the power of spectatorship. Seeing The Cellist perform brought Wen and Li-an together. But as Wen speaks to the audience, The Cellist watches her intensely: he is the spectator, now. And when Wen and The Cellist are far from each other, the audience must grapple with their own spectatorial habits: which of the two will they choose to watch?
If they choose Wen, they are treated to a vivid story. Fu’s performance is excitingly heightened, which matches the drama of the swelling, cello-lead soundscape: when Wen speaks about her childhood, for instance, Fu takes on the physicality of a child without abandon. There is no fourth wall in The Year of the Cello, so Fu doesn’t bother being unnecessarily realistic. This is theatre, after all.
But it’s the aural world that the production pays closest attention to: in the pre-show announcement, the audience is told that the show is Blind-friendly, and has been crafted to work as an audio-only experience. That definitely makes sense: Rogers’s playing is expressive, and would be beautiful enough to support a whole hour of listening even without the rest of play.
The Bach is nice, but it’s Kie’s compositions that really shine. The final, titular piece is especially spellbinding. It takes up a significant fraction of the show’s runtime, and includes many phrases that end with high-pitched harmonics. This technique withholds proper musical resolution, which is appropriate — Wen, too, never gets closure.
But as she kneels on her balcony, staring longingly at the glowing horizon, she at least has music. And that’s something.