Politics was on my mind as I attended Old 505 Theatre who are hosting the Archie Rose Touring Hub of the Sydney Fringe.  A production from Taiwan about the LGBT experience? Has to be political! That’s probably why I approached a lovely Taiwanese man and woman and, politely I hope, hit them with twenty questions.  What was the main religion I started off with, what laws impact on the community, what are the prevailing attitudes to queer people?  It went on like this for a while as I info-mined this very generous couple.

After a thoroughly engaging chat, I felt armed with a smidgen of non-wikipedia understanding with which to view BLUE ISLAND 99, my preconceptions about the manner of the production ripe for confrontation.  This is not an angry show, nor is it over-charged with Realpolitik, nor is it didactically political.  Instead the viewer is treated to a lyrical and conceptual work, created with stimulating and well-crafted multimedia and presented with skill and joy.

The solo artist, Tzu-Chieh Hsueh, begins in a box of plastic and speaks to us through a tiny megaphone.  Muted; loud; intelligible; not.  English words arrive to the ear in variegated tone.  “I come from Taiwan.”  “I like boys.”  The politics is there but it is woven into fabric of work.  Particularly in use of voice.

There is much about this show which will involve the voice and the suppression of it.   Hsueh will sometimes use the microphone, on occasion cupping his hands around it forcing a sibilance of echo, other times he will speak with the squawk of a walkie talkie hard on the ear.  A glass coffee mug will become a loudhailer, he will speak into a box and he will drop to a whisper as he flies West in search of love.

It is also about the story.  “We met as students.” We hear snippets of a chronicle and also experience the mother and the poet.  On the screen are projected translations for the boy’s narrative, yes, but the words retain their oddness of root even as written.  The syntax not quite right and the words slightly ill-used.  The poetry falls compellingly in its irregularity.  Not all the words are original, both words and music sound familiar on occasion.  Shuntaro Tanikawa’s ‘Twenty Billion Light Years of Loneliness’ is fret-fretting and there is ‘Starry Starry Night’ and drum brushed, slow harmonica-redolent jazz makes an appearance within the tightly structured narrative elements.

And the poetry and music give rise to some superb movement from Hsueh.  The thump of House and multi-coloured lights foreground a dance of sex and sinuousness and there is a character in red who moves with the precision of a ballet dancer in the heel lift, toe balance walk and the expressive mellifluousness of hands and fingers.  There is also a fractured sequence where the body disjoints and parts are not under his control … sudden and eloquent. Though BLUE ISLAND 99 avoids the creation of heavy or too easily accessible visual imagery, there is a representation of the end of a relationship that strikes hard at the emotions, immediately morphing into an  intimacy of pure skill as Hsueh creates waving, invisible, flower fields.

Hsueh also has wonderful skills as an actor, and as a singer: he has a lovely tenor.  I was almost tearful at the opening song of the piece but the devisors of the show take the path less trod to carry the work to a rationality of conclusion.  His fellow presenters Keng Cheng, I-Fang Wang, Yu-Hao Chang provide, in the show’s finality, a distance from the emotional aspects which have been explored for the last 60 minutes.

The meaning of the title is not evident until the closing of BLUE ISLAND 99 when a longer section of the well filmed and conceptualised video sequences closes the production.  The artist meeting you at the door as you exit and as slight bows are exchanged, the refined nature of this theatre making extends beyond its borders.  The analogy not lost on the viewer who has been given an insight into another life, another culture and the manifest otherness of being queer.  BLUE ISLAND 99 is a gift of a show where the haunting grace of its sharing is wrapped with the beauty of pathos and love.

BLUE ISLAND 99 is only playing until Saturday. Don’t miss it.