The Goodbye Girl 說別了，不要說再見

Kearen Pang and the friend she left behindBy Sylvia Chan

對那些散失的旅伴，我們應該感激他們曾經出現過，並且給我們留下了有關他們的回憶。落在地上的種子不死，留在心裡的友情也不會磨滅

Remember that treasured day when we and all our friends graduated from school? We spent long hours writing in our best friends’ graduation books, using the most felicitous phrases we could find to record our favourite moments at school. We loved to use “friendship forever” to end what we had written, genuinely believing that these friendships would last for the rest of our lives. But we soon find that friendships – even strong ones – rarely stand the test of time. The hustle and bustle of life, as both a fact and an excuse, keeps us from seeing our old friends. Slowly, we walk out of each others’ lives, and we gradually come to realize that only children talk about forever.

彭秀慧(Kearen Pang) ‘s recent work《再見不再見》(goodbye BUT goodbye) is a play dedicated to a “once close friend” whom time and distance has rendered a mere memory. Like Pang’s other works, goodbye BUT goodbye is no epic, but instead tell little tales, delivering moments of humor and moods of melancholy. The simple story of friendship is possible not only in the realm of dramatic imagination but also in real life. The story succeeds in making us reflect on what friendship is, and asks what saying “再見” (goodbye in Chinese, carries the meaning of meeting again) actually means.In previous plays, Pang has explored the plight of lonely women and looked at how they conceal their feelings of isolation. In goodbye BUT goodbye she again focuses on how loneliness is often hidden under a façade of independence.

Unlike the sensible林若君(Lam Yeuk-kwan) in 29+1, who conceals her loneliness so well that audiences have to stretch their sensibility to feel it,陸詠端(Luk Wing-tun), the children’s novel writer as the centre of goodbye BUT goodbye, leaves us in no doubt whatsoever that she desperately needs company. Luk comes across as extremely neurotic, prattling on to the audiences about how well-received her novels are – a claim soon revealed as far from the truth. In fact, Luk is on the verge of losing her writing job. Her futile efforts to convince audience members her works are popular only highlight her vulnerability. As Luk engages us in this “conversation” we audience members come to feel that it is not only readers this lonely lady so desperately needs, it is friends. She has none.

對那些散失的旅伴，我們應該感激他們曾經出現過，並且給我們留下了有關他們的回憶。落在地上的種子不死，留在心裡的友情也不會磨滅Then one day, Luk gets a call from her former boss, telling her that someone named張家敏(Cheung Ka-man) has contacted him to say she loves Luk’s novels and wishes to visit her. It transpires that “Cheung Ka-man” is the name of her best friend from childhood.

The play then flashes back to Luk’s childhood when she was close friends with Cheung. Perhaps ironically, this play about friendship – which Wikipedia defines as “a co-operative and supportive behavīor between two or more people’ – is a one-woman show, with Pang playing both Luk and Cheung. Her depiction of the two little girls was accurate and effective and she was successful in shaping two distinct characters, but with only Pang on stage the show could not depict how the two friends interact with each other. Technically, Luk and Cheung could only talk to themselves in the play.

Perhaps Pang meant this device to be a critique of the nature of friendship – when we talk to friends we are often eager to get things off our chest and only require their responses to be minimal, like “right,”, “I see,” and “of course.” IN fact, it can be hard to be sure if our friends are actually listening to us at all – nevertheless, we feel comforted after we have “shared” our feelings.

The play ends on a bittersweet note. In the last scene, it is revealed that the Cheung Ka-man who wishes to see Luk is not in fact her childhood friend. But a little girl she does not know. Meeting this young stranger, Luk gives a contented smile and dances with her. It is an ending at once profoundly sad and redeeming. Pang seems to be saying that if we lose our friends we’re likely to lose them forever. However, there are always new friends to be made and we will always have the memories of our old friends.

As I watched Luk dance with little Cheung, I recalled Russell Watson singing in “Take the past and hold it like a photograph, ‘Cos it’s the only way to say goodbye.” Undoubtedly, Luk has a picture of er childhood friend locked in her heart.

Sylvia Chan is Muse’s staff writer. She was previously a reporter for a local newspaper. She has a degree in architecture and received her Master in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong before joining Muse.