By Jennifer Beasley.
A coming-of-age story that highlights family values, resilience and friendship during the 1857 gold rush in Australia.
Hats off to Eva Di Cesare, the artistic creative director of Monkey Baa Theatre Company, who has shaped this sixty-minute semi-historical and narrative performance of a thirteen-year-old Chinese boy’s experience as he travels with his father, leader of the Chinese miners, crossing nearly 700km by foot on the treacherous lands between South Australia to Victoria’s Ballarat during the 19th Century gold rush.
Based upon the book Yong: The Journey of An Unworthy Son, by Janeen Brian, and transformed into a play by talented writer Jenevieve Chang, this show grips the audience throughout. Actor Alan Zhu performs with agility and vigour the role of Yong. As part of his repertoire in this one-man show, Zhu incorporates the voices of two fellow travellers, his father and the evil Englishman George, while voiceovers of his grandmother and mother round out the play and inject a balancing feminine strength.
Zhu works wonders covering the stage with grace and agility (Movement Direction by Angie Diaz) at The Showroom at the Melbourne Arts Centre, which consists of a wooden stage with two covered drop holes, and sided by walls with a spinning wheel (depicting the wagon wheels of the cart), canvas sails, crates of food and mining tools. A simple sheer curtain backdrop allows painted visuals to screen – the wild sea as they cross the ocean from China, the forested walk as they forge ahead, and storms that batter them on their way.
Fabulous direction from Darren Yap, with a stirring composition by Max Mabert, with focused and powerful lighting by Ben Brockman and the supporting everyday sounds from Zac Saric of the moving cart, the swelling seas, rain and barking dog expertly rounds off an immersive experience that propels this play above the ordinary.
Such is the realism and emotional connection of this performance that the young girls sitting next to my companion grabbed each other in distress when Yong enters his dark night of the soul, encountering a situation that defines the threshold between humorous childhood antics and the mantle of adulthood.
The only section in the play I queried is the meeting between Yong and the Indigenous father and child. It didn’t seem to forward the story and could have easily been cut from the performance or at least linked earlier, an observation echoed by my companion. However, this still does not detract from the power and pathos of this outstanding performance.
The importance of our Chinese heritage from the many brave miners who came to this country to make a better life for themselves deserved to be told and retold. Yong is destined to take a place in the story of our Chinese miners, where even small stories hold heroic status amidst racism, ageism and adversity in a world that needs these stories of hope more than ever.
Yong plays at The Showroom, Arts Centre Melbourne, at 6:30pm until 2nd August 2025 and touring locally.
