The Sin Family returns to HK stage tonight. And this time, director Fung Wai-hang is keen to plumb the depths of domestic conflicts rather than play it to the galleries. Evelyn Yu reports.

When The Sin Family debuted in Hong Kong in 2015, director Fung Wai-hang had presented the play on the lines of a sitcom. The audience had a hearty laugh watching a rich lady cross swords with her husband, behave like a shrew and try to coerce him into shelling out millions to pay her alimony. The play opens for a re-run at Hong Kong City Hall tonight. This time Fung wants to do more with the same material - explore the nature of the family conflicts at a deeper level.

The Sin Family is about a Mr and Mrs Sit who made sure their son grew up on the lap of luxury but never cared to spend much time with him. There is no peace at home as the couple is constantly bickering. Young Sit becomes a spoiled, privileged boy. The three-member family, rarely ever seen together, finally get round to having a conversation when they stake their claims in the family resources. Even as Mrs Sit demands a hefty alimony, her teenage son asks for his share, threatening his parents at gunpoint.

Ko Hon-man plays the husband who has dispute over alimony with his wife.

Fung is interested in portraying how materialist impulses often get the better of people's sense of ethics and inherited value systems. Greed makes people behave boorishly, even with their immediate family. Fung says, while the audience is likely to have a hearty laugh every now and then, "they might feel a sting in their hearts" when they realize the situation, though exaggerated in the play, was probably not so different from their own.

The play is meant to be an expose of the ugliness that often lies beneath the veneer of affluence. Mr Sit asks his wife to entertain him like a taxi dancer, offering to pay her HK$50,000 right away. A humiliated Mrs Sit threw things at her husband in a hysterical fit. Sit junior is shown to have grown into a little monster. He is arrogant and selfish, takes drugs and shamelessly flirts with his tutor.

Female lead Candice Yu says the play has inspired parents to re-connect with their grown-up children.

Playwright Matthew Cheng penned the script over five years ago. The idea was triggered by multiple newspaper headlines about the arrogance of those born into wealth on the Chinese mainland. Cheng decided to play up the ridiculousness of greed and vanity when he wrote the play.

Cheng contends an excessive pursuit of material comforts is central to the play. It's about grown-ups obsessing about getting more from life, forgetting about cultivating their minds, and their vacuous lifestyle being followed by the next generation. It's the parents who are responsible for turning their son into such a monster, says Cheng.

Star of the show

TV and film personality Candice Yu On-on plays the lead as Mrs Sit. She won the Best Actress trophy at the Hong Kong Drama Awards this year for her performance.

When I caught up with her on the sidelines of a rehearsal, Yu joyfully shared the news of her elder daughter's wedding toward the end of this year. Unlike the self-centered Mrs Sit she plays on stage, Yu, a single mother, has been very close to her daughters. She thinks communication and caring rather than money help bind a family together.

She was happy to note that many of her friends started spending more time with their children after they had watched the show. The play could serve as a reminder to parents to start re-connecting with their grown-up children, especially those who might not have realized yet that lack of communication could lead to a serious problem, Yu said. Parents who tell themselves that they could always talk to their children later might find such deferrals cost them dear in the long run.

Having been divorced twice, Yu still has great faith in the notions of family and love. She was, famously, married to the Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-fat in the early 1980s, for about nine months. She had two daughters with her second husband, whom she divorced in 2003.

"Marriage is not about binding two people together but making a very good commitment," says Yu. "Even people whose relationship is fraught with all sorts of friction might still be holding hands in public because they are committed to work on those problems together."

There will be 14 shows of The Sin Family in Hong Kong, followed by three each in Beijing and Tianjin. Yu disclosed that the film rights of the play were sold recently and she was going to essay the role of Mrs Sit in the movie adaptation as well.

Contact the writer at

evelyn@chinadailyhk.com

The Sin Family is the story of a dysfunctional family who hardly ever share a space except to haggle over family assets. Photos provided to China Daily

(HK Edition 07/22/2016 page8)