A Tale of the Southern Sky will feature 23 original songs by local composer Lau Wing Tao, with choreography by Hong Kong Dance Company’s artistic director Yang Yuntao
“The first time I went abroad to see Les Misérables in London’s West End, I went bonkers,” Mandy Yiu laughs, sitting with her legs crossed on the studio ground, “I fell in love with musicals right away.” There is still a trace of the ambitious, vivacious performing arts fresh graduate in who is now the executive director of Actors' Family, Hong Kong’s only professional musical company which has produced over 40 original Cantonese musicals since 1991. This June, Yiu and her team will put on another brand-new production, A Tale of the Southern Sky, which features 23 original songs by local composer Lau Wing Tao, and choreography by Hong Kong Dance Company’s artistic director Yang Yuntao.
While Les Misérables is a familiar name to most Hongkongers, chances are, not a lot can name one Cantonese musical off their heads. That isn’t surprising. Musicals in the West have a long history. They were first performed in the middle of the 19th century mostly as musical comedies along with crude variety revue for across multiple strata of economic class in America. Modern musicals with dance and original music appeared on Broadway with the opening of The Black Crook in 1866, an original piece considered as the first musical which fitted many of the modern definitions of the art form, including dance and original music to tell a story. It underwent much transformations in style, scale and purpose in time, such as from being escapist entertainment during World War I, film materials in the mid-twentieth century, to promoting social acceptance of minorities or gender differences since the early golden age. When compared to the long history of Broadway, Hong Kong’s theatre scene only started flourishing a few decades ago, let alone musicals.