Two decades after Wong Kar-wai’s celebrated masterpiece In the Mood for Love, this ravishing new stage with a projected digital performance – specially...
In the Mood – A Love Letter to Wong Kar-wai and Hong Kong starring Rainbow Chan, Eugene Choi & Marcus Whale | Vivid LIVE
Bennelong Point
2000 NSW
Australia
Access and Inclusion
Event Details
Two decades after Wong Kar-wai’s celebrated masterpiece In the Mood for Love, this ravishing new stage with a projected digital performance – specially commissioned for the Sydney Opera House and first streamed online in 2020 – reimagines the filmmaker’s vision for the Drama Theatre stage at Vivid LIVE. Featuring a theatrical set, ’60s style costumes, and sax-drenched renditions of the film’s romantic soundtrack – alongside new music sung by Chinese-Australian artists Rainbow Chan and Marcus Whale, and Eugene Choi now appearing as the ghostly narrator via projection – it’s a lavish, live-on-stage audio-visual journey that guides the audience through a heartbreaking cycle of longing, intimacy and forbidden love.
Inspired by In the Mood for Love’s impressionistic end title – ‘That era is past, nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.’ – Chan, Choi and Whale explore their interweaving cultural heritage in a performance that echoes a collective nostalgia for their ancestral homeland. Conceived in an era where lockdown and loneliness forced us to reconcile our beloved relationships and self-identities, Wong Kar-wai’s multi award-winning film is refracted onto the live stage; a musical meditation on the restorative power of unadulterated desire.
Taking cues from Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s plush red imagery, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung’s iconic costumes and the steamy script where a brushed stroke can refract a thousand words, the performance features songs from Rainbow Chan’s latest record Stanley (Eastern Margins, 2021), original takes on the film’s classic theme, and even a choreographed Bossa Nova dance that takes us back to a simpler time. Are you in the mood for love?