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theatre review

In No Foreigners, micro-to-macro cameras are trained on miniature figurines, visible at the front of the stage in front of a bank of computer screens, and projected live onto a large screen above the stage.

We make assumptions all the time; reach hasty conclusions based on the evidence at hand, even if the information is minimal. No Foreigners, by Governor-General's Award-winning playwright David Yee, had its world premiere in Vancouver on Thursday. As a result of its title, I anticipated (before reading any background information) a sort of theatrical call-to-action in the Trump era. And a pro-immigration play as an antidote to the poison floating around out there south of the border seemed like just the ticket for a weary, socially conscious soul.

But from the first scene, set in a handbag store, it became clear that this was a much more complex look at immigration; not a mere polemic, but a nuanced, layered and exceedingly clever look at the diasporic experience. The foreigner in that store is not the foreign-born Chinese woman who runs it, but the Canadian of Chinese descent who tries to buy a purse there for his girlfriend. He is forbidden from doing so, as he is not a member. In this setting – a Chinese mall on Canadian soil, something like the Aberdeen Centre in Richmond, B.C., or the Pacific Mall in Markham, Ont. – he is the foreigner.

"How can I be a foreigner?" he wonders. "I'm Canadian."

The scene – the entire 80-minute production – is performed live, but this is not a live-action play. Rather, it's an interdisciplinary innovative wonder, complete with cinematic opening credits. Micro-to-macro cameras are trained on miniature figurines, visible at the front of the stage in front of a bank of computer screens, and projected live onto a large screen above the stage. On-screen text is interspersed with dialogue performed live by April Leung and Derek Chan, who also manipulate the figurines, positioning them onto their tiny sets.

Sometimes the on-text screen serves to translate what the characters are saying in Cantonese; sometimes the printed words tell us what the characters are really thinking while their spoken words indicate something entirely (or even a little) different. Sometimes the text indicates what the characters are speaking aloud, while the uttered dialogue represents what they are silently thinking.

If it sounds confusing, it's not. The juggling between thoughts and dialogue may keep you on your toes and mess with your brain a bit – but it's never impossible to follow. And I loved how this replicated the linguistic juggling of the immigrant experience: speaking in one language but thinking in another, communicating using one language at home, and another out in the world. It also reflected the first-generation-Canadian experience – but the other way around (they think and mostly speak in the language of their country of birth, but may communicate with their parents in the language of their ancestry).

Leung and Chan, who are both terrific, dress in black and carry out their various tasks in the dark. Chan, though, is thrust into the spotlight for a karaoke performance; karaoke being one of the crucial elements of Chinese culture this Canadian boy must pursue on his cultural quest.

The scene provoked laughter, but I detected a serious message behind the silliness, having to do with culture and perceptions of culture. Is karaoke authentically important, or is this a diasporic – or even a non-Chinese – view of Chinese culture? The references to counterfeit DVDs, koi ponds and kung fu – was this reductive list some sort of joke? Or do migrants reach for tangible markers, no matter how trivial, when they must manufacture a new home?

"You are here," the show begins, the on-screen text accompanied by a giant red dot. When "here" is not quite home – at least not your original home – how do you make it that? Do you recreate the place you came from, or fashion a new space with familiar touchstones – even if they're as simple as a pot of tea or a penchant for using the term "Jade" in your store name, no matter what you're selling?

In this Amazon era, the immigrant-run and targeted shops in the No Foreigners mall aren't always commercially successful. Making money, however, may be beside the point. These merchants, feeling an intense homesickness, have set up a world in their new country where they can feel a sense of home again. This mall is as much about community as it is about commerce.

In addition to the visual elements, the soundtrack is terrific – often slow and hypnotic, and punctuated with cheesy gems, like a (mostly) Cantonese cover of George Michael's Careless Whisper.

The show, originally commissioned by Theatre Conspiracy and co-created by Hong Kong Exile and fu-GEN Theatre, did feel a bit slow at times. While I imagine that pacing was deliberate, I cringed at the yawns I could hear on opening night – audible during breaks in the music, when audience activity was not drowned out by the score.

But my thoughts were swimming as I left. There were three things I wanted to do: plan a visit to the Aberdeen Centre, discuss and discuss what we'd just seen, and go back and see it again. This play, about a portal to another world, also offers one, allowing the audience to slip away into another culture – or perhaps their own. When it was over, I wasn't quite ready to climb back out.

No Foreigners is at The Cultch in Vancouver until Feb. 17; and at The Theatre Centre in Toronto Feb. 21-25.

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