Two years ago this month, Bonni Chan had an electrifying experience. It was in the King’s Theatre at the Edinburgh International Festival. David Harrower’s play Blackbird had just had its premiere and Chan was at the performance the Guardian’s theatre critic billed as “a riveting study in sexual obsession that leaves one both shaken and stirred”.

For the HKAPA-trained actress, director and co-founder – with Sean Curran – of Theatre du Pif, “It was one of those experiences, when you see a good work in a theatre or the cinema, that leaves you feeling so charged. You feel a great surge of energy and passion for theatre!”

Yet despite the Cheung Chau-born Chan considering Blackbird an “amazing and breathtaking” play in which “everything merged wonderfully together”, she didn’t immediately think of bringing it to Hong Kong. That wasn’t because the provocative work boldly addresses a subject – sexual relations between a middle-aged male and a female who’s just 12-years-old at the start of the affair – that’s taboo, never mind controversial. Neither was it due to her thinking that the contemporary drama set in Manchester, England – but which she looks upon as “very universal, touching on universal themes like love, desire, a kind of morality in the realm of love” – wouldn’t travel well.

Rather, in discussing Theatre du Pif’s decision to finally stage the Asian premiere of this thought-provoking play now, Chan explains, “Most of our work, as in 90% of our past productions, are original devices; more visually and physical-based theatre. But this one we decided to do because both [Sean and myself] actually feel that it’s an extraordinary play very much worth introducing to the Hong Kong audience.”

And although Chan regularly devises and directs Theatre du Pif’s productions, she has elected to hand over the directorial reins for Blackbird to Jovanni Sy, a Toronto-based actor, singer, playwright and producer who is also artistic director of Canada’s Cahoots Theatre Projects. Instead, her principal role in this English language production, this “straight play, no multimedia, nothing”, is as co-star with leading Canadian actor Ashley Wright.

On their decision to keep the play in English, Chan notes, “In Hong Kong, the main language is Cantonese, so we get a lot of companies doing translated work and text-based work. But, then, sometimes, in translating plays, there is a big cultural difference and when translated, you will feel something is missing in the context or the use of language.” And so, as this play is so powerful, Theatre du Pif will present it in the language in which it was written and originally presented.

Not that Theatre du Pif, which prides itself on its creativity, will mount a replica of the production that travelled from Edinburgh to London, where it won the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, before crossing the Atlantic. As Chan divulges, in considering the cross-cultural possibilities for this theatrical hit whose director in both Edinburgh and London was the German Peter Stein, they had wondered whether they shouldn’t change its setting to Toronto, where this version of the play was workshopped and which is the native city of their Canadian collaborators, Sy and Wright.

In the end, the decision was made to stick with the play’s original English setting. And Chan confirms too that the Hong Kong production will retain all the dramatic work’s original lines. Still, she recognizes that in casting herself alongside Ashley Wright, an extra frisson has been thrown into Blackbird’s already emotionally charged equation: it’s no longer just a matter between an adult male and considerably younger female but also of a Caucasian man and a Chinese girl.

Having lived in a suburb of Manchester herself during her time abroad, it’s with some measure of personal experience that Chan talks about how “you see the mixing and it’s very possible, especially in the suburbs, that they would meet and the situation would happen.” Considering this scenario more deeply, she muses, “Especially, I think, the kind of attraction of a father figure or adult figure and also a very reserved Caucasian British or Canadian man. It’s very possible, you know, the desire is more intriguing, I feel. And also the after-effect.”

After pausing, less for dramatic effect and more to take care articulating it all, Chan continues, “What the parents will think about it, the trauma it brings – to the Chinese mum and dad, it’s such an insult, such an incident would be...” but she never does finish the sentence and I’m left guessing that its final words would have been something like ‘unspeakably horrible’.

Then a minute or so later, more analytically, Chan says she feels in their staging, “the sensitivity or chemistry between the two characters will be very different from all the other productions”. And admits that the audience reaction to the Hong Kong production’s upping of the emotional ante is something she is really looking forward to viewing and feeling.

Then returning to her memories of the production in Edinburgh, Chan says, “The wonderful thing is that at the end, you don’t know how to react. There are some moments of emotion that are so mixed you [wonder if the situation reveals] child abuse or a true love relationship. And the balance of the play, the wonder of it, is that you come out and you don’t know how to relate to that...”

Clearly, she hopes that is the reaction her audience will have to the work. At the same time, she also trusts that Hong Kong theatregoers will feel able to apply what they see in the play to all love relationships: “Power, a kind of crush, a common word, a brief moment of crazy love. Or is it...?” And in so doing, Chan feels, they will see that this work is not only about paedophilia. Instead, and ultimately, “It’s in a bigger sense how we look at what is the right type of love, which is the wrong type of love, what is crossing the line.”

Blackbird will be performed at the HK Cultural Centre’s Studio Theatre from August 30 to September 2. Evening performances on August 30-31 commence at 8pm and at 8:30pm on September 1. The matinee on Sept. 1 starts at 4pm while on Sept. 2 it begins at 5pm. Tickets are $180 and $120 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.