“I guess it’s just a play that many audiences love.” Stan Lai, Artistic Director and co-founder of Taiwan’s premier theatre group Performance Workshop, has written and directed 27 original plays to date, he thinks, but it is a work he wrote and directed back in 1986 that is by far the most popular, influential and enduring.

Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land has struck an uncommon chord with audiences both in and outside of Taiwan, including in the country whose government considers Taiwan to be a renegade province. Its playwright says that he has been told over 1,000 performances of the play – all unofficial! – have been staged in Mainland China, with over 100 productions in Beijing alone. And unauthorized videos of a 1992 film adaptation of Secret Love he directed “can be readily bought on the streets for 8 Yuan”.

Secret Love was brought to Hong Kong with great success in 1991 starring acting legend Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia – who originally hailed from Taiwan but has now settled here. Some 16 years later, and as part of the HKSAR’s 10th anniversary celebrations, Lai is teaming up with the HK Repertory Theatre and the National Theatre Company of China for a Hong Kong revival of this contemporary Chinese classic – but this time in two special versions, one performed entirely in Cantonese while the other is a Mandarin-Cantonese mix.

Granted, in the grand scheme of things, “if you look at the classics of the world,” as Lai puts it, 21 years is not a long time for a play to stay in the repertoire. Nonetheless, it is a long time for a play ostensibly about two theatre companies on the same stage at the same time – one rehearsing a melancholy contemporary drama called Secret Love, the other a farcical costume piece called Peach Blossom Land – but which reflects and takes its meaning from a particular Chinese socio-political environment.

Secret Love has had to contend with dramatic changes in the political landscape of its home territory in the last two decades or so. As Lai notes, “When we made this in 1986, Martial Law had not yet been lifted [in Taiwan], travel to China was not permitted. So back then we were tackling difficult and taboo topics. But even as early as ’91-’92 with the film version, that had already changed.” Still, in contrast to 2007, “It was still something very fresh in the memory of all of the people in Taiwan who were watching the film.”

So how does Lai explain Secret Love’s continued popularity and power? “The fact of Martial Law having been lifted 20 years ago doesn’t factor in people’s minds anymore but I think that a new dimension appears from the story of Secret Love which is the universal elements of secret love.” In particular, the feelings of longing expressed in it: “They seem to take over and then you don’t have to worry about the topical problems of
the day.”

Something else Lai rather amusedly notes is that Secret Love is actually one of those works that offers much grist to the theorizing mill and is open to a spectrum of views. “You could easily over-intellectualize this play,” he says. “I think that every person walks away from it with their own interpretation and that can be something wildly different from another person’s. And it really depends on what you’re looking at and what you care for.”

As Lai laughingly observes, “Many people try to ‘interpret’ Secret Love, try to give it political overtones, try to guess what I’m thinking. In ’86, when it was first performed, a friend of mine who’s a literature professor came out of the performance and said, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen the isolation of the self being performed so beautifully’ and I’m thinking, ‘Did I do that?’ Then, another Buddhist friend of mine said, ‘Wow, there’s Buddhist teaching in the play’ and I’m thinking, ‘I didn’t try to do that!’” Sobering up somewhat though, he adds, “But it’s okay, you know. In a way, it has an amazing life of its own and people really get different things out of it.”

However, Lai does see the need to introduce changes and adaptations to better suit audiences when Secret Love is performed outside its native Taiwan. To a large degree, “Over the years, it becomes more of a performance piece like Peking Opera where you have to do things a certain way for certain things to be right.” Geographic distance and time dictate certain provisos and explanations have to be made to better serve the audience and the play itself.

When he staged the play in the US last year, he realized that American audiences would not know that Peach Blossom Land is based on a Chinese literary classic. So he added a conversation in which one of the characters rehearsing the comic segment asks another, “Hey, don’t you think the audience should get some knowledge of Tao Yuanming’s Chronicle of the Peach Blossom Spring since it’s such an important piece in the play? Should we give them slides or projections or something?” And the other character replies, “Look, we’ve deconstructed it!”

Mindful also that not everyone in a Hong Kong audience will be familiar with Tao’s 5th century allegory, Lai is thinking of including that same section in the version of the play performed here this July and August. And he hopes another touch will also make it more relevant locally. “I’m changing the location to Hong Kong. That is, the theatre which is in dispute is a Hong Kong theatre which means that the actors in the Cantonese version will all be from Hong Kong and the director from Taiwan, supposedly, or has lived in Taiwan and is trying to produce this play about Taiwan in Hong Kong. It’s like different twists,” he says.

Lai also thinks a sense of difference has helped make this play “a very special theatrical experience. If you’ve never seen it before, your friends will say that you have to because it’s different from anything that you’ve ever seen. And that’s why I guess it has its long life.”

Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land will be performed at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre’s Grand Theatre from July 27 to 29 and again from August 2 to 11. Evening performances are scheduled to commence at 7:45pm while the July 29 and August 5 matinee performances will start at 2:45pm. Tickets are variously priced from $300 to $120 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.