Play «Ông Không Phải Là Bố Tôi» (You Are Not My Father)

   A man who once walked out on his wife and son comes back years later to look for them — by which time the children have grown up and life has arranged itself without him. Calculation and greed pull the family apart a second time, and the blood tie that had only just begun to hold starts to tear. You end up answering the question yourself: does blood alone earn forgiveness?

   The script was written by Lưu Quang Vũ in 1988, the year he died, and is one of the last things he finished. By the age of 40 he had left behind some 50 plays; he was killed in a crash on Highway 5 in Hải Dương together with his wife, the poet Xuân Quỳnh, and their son. In 2000 he was posthumously given the Ho Chi Minh Prize, the country's highest state award in the arts and sciences.

   This production opened on 2 April 2022. It was directed by Nguyễn Sĩ Tiến, a state-honoured artist who now runs the theatre, with stage design by Doãn Bằng, a People's Artist. Its defining feature is that the play was mounted with two entirely separate casts, drawn from faces Hanoi audiences know well: Đức Khuê, Thanh Sơn, Thu Quỳnh, Lương Thu Trang, Hoa Thúy, Quỳnh Dương, Minh Cúc and others.

   Lưu Quang Vũ writes no villain: everyone on stage has their reasons, which is exactly what makes taking sides so hard. If you follow Vietnamese theatre, or simply want a family drama rather than a show built for visitors, this is one of the sharper texts still in the repertoire.

   Nhà hát Tuổi Trẻ has been staging Lưu Quang Vũ since his debut «Sống mãi tuổi 17» in 1980, and «Lưu Quang Vũ plays» have long been a house signature. The theatre sits just south of Hoàn Kiếm Lake, a short taxi ride from the Old Quarter, and it is running a second play of his this same August — «Hoa cúc xanh trên đầm lầy».

   There are two performances this August, on the 8th and the 22nd. The play is performed in Vietnamese and rests entirely on its dialogue.

   Come for the argument rather than the verdict — this one refuses to hand you either.