Chloe is of Hong Kong heritage and on holiday from England in Hong Kong when, at a wedding party, she meets the Hong Kong student Jonathan in A J Yi’s play that opens on the eve of the 2019 protests.
They are a very odd couple. She is socially at ease, engaging, confident and dressed for dancing, Jonathan seems awkward, mostly unsmiling and in his grey suit looking like he might have been en route to his city job.
Their conversation doesn't run smoothly. He’s into Beethoven and Coldplay, she’s a fan of Beyoncé. In fact, she reckons “Beyoncé is the reason Obama got elected”. That’s an early, if unusual, indication that she takes an interest of sorts in politics.
Surprisingly drawn to each other (and at times Jonathan looks as if he shares our surprise), they even dance together, though Jonathan’s dance is so weird it had much of the audience laughing and cheering.
Humorous conversations power the first section of the play, which resembles a light romantic comedy or perhaps a coming-of-age story. Nothing sensational happens. Chloe (Mei Mei Macleod) goes home with Jonathan (Liam Lau-Fernandez), but they sleep in separate rooms with a drunken Chloe for a time trying to eat candles belonging to Jonathan’s dad.
The following day, she returns to University in England but maintains contact via text and phone calls. Excited by the unrest in Hong Kong, she suggests they compile a musical playlist for the revolution.
Jonathan decides to practice playing the ukulele, but finds the university janitor Mr Chu (Zak Shukor) busy making protest placards in the room he has booked. They become another humorous pairing with the student taking a more reserved line about politics. When he asks if “the British will save us,” Mr Chu reminds him that “when the British ruled, they dangled universal suffrage in front of us,” but the reason they conquered Hong Kong was to import opium into China. Gradually, his contact with Chou and Chloe modifies his attitude toward the unrest.
The light comedy of the first section turns into a quite intense second-section drama in which Jonathan becomes at times quite eloquent. The politics can seem a bit tokenistic, but the show does manage with just its three believable characters to conjure up the atmosphere of social conflict.