A Playlist for the Revolution at the Bush Theatre – review

Even if AJ Yi’s new play weren’t so good, Chinese and South East Asian stories are so scarce on UK stages that this would still be an event. As it turns out, A Playlist For The Revolution is even more than that: it’s a full-on cause for celebration, a rousing, sweet but spiky confection that starts out in rom-com territory but quickly develops into something darker, richer and more intriguing.

When two students – native Hong Konger Jonathan (Liam Lau-Fernandez, reminiscent of a younger, Asian Jonathan Bailey) and visiting British-Chinese Chloe (Mei Mei Macleod, sparkling) – meet at a party in 2019, they’re so adorably mismatched. He’s eager but buttoned-up, she’s affectionately mocking and too-cool-for-school. It feels like we’re already deep into Richard Curtis territory. Sure enough, they drink, dance, verbally spar and she misses her flight home. It’s very funny, accurately observed and Yi gets some delightful mileage out of the contrasting cultures and attitudes of this engaging pair.

The title refers partially to the Spotify playlist they share amongst themselves after Chloe has returned home and they’re continents apart. The power of music to cut emotional corners and vividly evoke feelings and locations is beautifully described. The show changes tone sharply but convincingly when Jonathan encounters Zak Shukor’s irascible janitor Mr Chu, whose rebellious left-wing pronouncements he passes off as his own as he relays them long distance to an avid Chloe. The plot strand comes off like a politicised riff on Cyrano de Bergerac.

Of course, all of this is happening on the eve of the now-famous Hong Kong protests of 2019-20 where record numbers of people took to the urban streets to demonstrate against a new government bill to facilitate extraditions to mainland China. Although he’s at first reticent and fearful, unwilling to get involved, Jonathan is eventually swept up in the unrest, galvanised into action by the unconventionally charismatic Chu and the potency of group action. Emily Ling Williams’s high-energy production brilliantly captures the sense of a sophisticated, modern, hedonistic city transforming overnight into a temporary war zone. Gillian Tan’s striking lighting turns from soft to sulphurous, and Liam Bunster’s elegantly stark design, indicating a rooftop amongst a sea of skyscrapers, becomes chaotically cluttered.

The cast is terrific. Lau-Fernandez invests Jonathan with infinite charm and charts his journey from timidity to rabblerousing with unerring accuracy. Shukor has the bulk of the humour, some of it fairly dark, which he delivers masterfully, and suggests chasms of genuine pain beneath Chu’s gruff, tinder-dry exterior. Macleod is a satisfying tornado of youthful enthusiasm and right-on platitudinising, so much so that it’s a shame that her character is, perhaps inevitably, relegated to the sidelines for much of the second act.

Complex yet accessible, A Playlist for the Revolution is several things at once, and most of them are fascinating: it’s an examination of the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, of the extraordinary puissance of music, the curious differences between East and West, and the gulf between performative activism (Chloe) and the lived struggles of those who are participating in the real thing (Mr Chu and Jonathan). If it’s slightly too long (the endless back and forth of Chloe and Jonathan’s long-distance messaging gets a bit repetitive, despite being winningly performed), it’s full of wonderful things. There’s a particularly lovely sequence where Jonathan sends Chloe a selection of Hong Kong snacks and her joy warms the heart, and the comic interlude where the two men go for a light breakfast and end up ordering most of the menu is a real gem. This whimsicality ought not to sit so comfortably alongside the heavier themes, but miraculously it does.

Yi is a tremendous writer, with wit and ambition and this cracking, multifaceted play would make an excellent film or mini-series, although the vitality of these characters and their impassioned, frequently hilarious words are particularly irresistible in the immediacy of live theatre. Yes, the Bush has done it again!