6 actors, 3 directors, 4 versions, 1 classic play

Poon Wai-sum's The Isle was first staged more than 30 years ago. This short and lyrical play, about a man and a woman who meet on a nameless island where the movement of time does not follow the logic of the calendar, has served as a classic learning material for students of theater for decades. Poon, who was dean of the School of Drama at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) for five years before he became artistic director of the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre (HKRep), earlier this year, recalls seeing HKAPA drama students perform The Isle every semester.

The reasons for the play's abiding popularity aren't hard to guess. While a man and a woman trying to navigate the ebb and flow of their relationship is probably the most common theme of all time, it's also one that's always current. Poon has put a spin on this oldest of stories by setting it in a natural, and also dreamlike, space where the realms of the real and imaginary overlap. For instance, halfway through the play, there's no telling who the male protagonist is anymore. He could be Cheung Ping - the person he'd introduced himself as to So Ching, when they first met - or Hon Sam - the man whose return So has spent years waiting for - who he later claims to be. It's a question that remains unresolved, as So is unable to identify him as one or the other, having lost her eyesight by this time.

The play's lasting appeal is owed to its spare, poetic dialogue. The language has a lilting, musical quality, and flows like a gentle breeze - a throwback, perhaps, to a time when being in a relationship wasn't necessarily as complicated as it seems nowadays. Poon reveals that he revisited the script recently. "Over the past 30 years, I have become more sensitive to language and its use, so I adapted some of the dialogue, using language that was more fraught with dramatic tension, compared with the original," he says. His aim was to make it "more precise by taking out the extraneous words".

HKRep celebrated The Isle's enduring legacy this past May by putting on three versions, each featuring a different pair of actors, and a fourth where all six appeared together. For the play's sextet iteration, co-directors Fong Chun-kit, Lau Shau-ching and Yau Ting-fai decided to mix and match the pairings from the two-hander versions. A seasoned and feted actor himself, Lau explains that since the evolving relationship between the man and woman in the play shows a progression from youth to maturity, it made sense to have each male actor, representing different ages and specific quirks of Cheung Ping, take turns to play opposite all three versions of So Ching - who is similarly varied in terms of ethos and temperament. "We tried to capture the characters' transitions from one stage to another, and create a microcosm of the evolving relationship between them," adds Lau.

Among the three So Chings - played by Eva Mak, Kiki Cheung and Wong Hiu-yee - the last gave the most understated performance. In the subtlest of ways, she succeeded in opening a window into the character's innermost thoughts. Wong's So Ching is someone who has made peace with all her losses - of the man she had loved, of time spent waiting for him to return, and of her eyesight.

Among the male leads, Eddy Au Yeung employed his comic flair to the hilt, playing Cheung Ping with an endearing goofiness. Angus Chan was the classic charmer, whereas Trickle Choi - as co-director Lau points out - played an adolescent, restless version of the character to Wong's mature, and self-possessed, So Ching.

"No matter how hard he tries, he can never keep up with her wit and intelligence," says Lau, adding that the Choi-Wong pairing demonstrates a dynamic closest to that in the original script.