Sebastian Kaiser’s stage adaptation of Liu Yichang’s The Drunkard is as chaotic and electrifying as an exhilarating night out.
This two-and-a-half-hour commission for the Hong Kong Arts Festival stays true to the 1962 novel’s rebellious spirit while freely adapting the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of a struggling writer drinking himself into oblivion.
Among the many liberties taken is the splitting of the unnamed protagonist into two parts, played by actress Sze Wei and actor Yeung Hop-to.
The former is rather too dashing for the role, but she is, after all, the more lucid half of the Drunkard, still shakily hanging on to his lonely, avant-garde ideals.
