Play «Mật Mã Cầu Cơ» (The Spirit Board Code)

   Tucked into District 1, this is the kind of Ho Chi Minh City stage that locals book for themselves rather than for visitors. In late August nineteen actors step out under its lights for a production whose title points at cầu cơ — the Vietnamese spirit board, the local cousin of the ouija.

   The poster sets the mood plainly: a white figure standing in a doorway, a trench-coated man with a revolver, characters in period costume, dry branches and a rope strung across the frame.

   The essentials:

• — Directed by Cao Tấn Lộc; written by Cao Tuấn and Minh Lộc
• — A nineteen-strong cast including Hữu Tiến, Thuận Nguyễn, Minh Dự, Hữu Đằng and Phạm Yến
• — Set design by Quốc Toàn, music by Lê Triều Vỹ, lighting by Tony Tùng
• — Produced by An Thi and Trần Đại

   Go if you want Vietnamese theatre as it is actually played week to week — a repertory night for a home crowd, not a showcase built for tourists. Language learners get a second reason: the delivery is colloquial and the staging physical enough to follow even when a line escapes you.

   Three seating tiers are on sale — standard, VIP and VVIP; the gap is seventy thousand dong and a few rows of proximity to the stage.

   The play is performed in Vietnamese.

   You are ten minutes from the backpacker streets and a world away from their playlists — a fair trade for one evening.