REVIEW: Letters Home | Joe Lui

If you know your Perth independent theatre, you’ll know a man named Joe Lui. He’s a singular man of many talents, and although you’ll find him travelling most frequently behind the scenes as writer, director, and lighting and sound designer, he has ventured into the spotlight for the first time in an autobiographical one-man show on now at The Blue Room.

Letters Home, produced by Renegade Productions (of whom Lui is a founding member), is quite a unique offering in the current round of shows on in Perth.

If you don’t know Joe Lui, this is probably an essential way to meet him. He lays a lot of his personality, mind and soul bare in this confessional piece; he fearlessly shares profoundly personal thoughts about his childhood, his Chinese heritage, his sexual proclivities and his art. He addresses his absent parents via letters spoken in monologue, often times facing two empty chairs placed for them at a red lacquer table. He prepares a stage-friendly Chinese New Year’s Eve reunion dinner for them, but his parents are there only in spirit. They’re in Singapore, his homeland to which he can never return; this piece is Joe’s way of coming to terms with this permanent separation through his art.

See the full review on Perth Culture here.