Royal MTC delivers hard-boiled mystery with bite in world premiere of Nine Dragons

Nine Dragons, the season-opener at the Royal MTC's Warehouse, is a new play borrowing from a well-worn genre hard-boiled detective fiction.

But there's a twist in Richmond, B.C., playwright Jovanni Sy's murder mystery a smart exploration of colonialism, racism, assimilation and the clash of cultures. Altogether, it makes for a thriller that's more thrilling for its intellectual heft than for the whodunit aspect.

It all begins as a murder mysteryset against the backdrop of Hong Kong's Kowloon district in the 1920s.

"In Kowloon, you can't tell the police from the criminals," says our hero, Tommy Lam (John Ng). He's a seasoned homicide detective, the best at his job, but held back by the racistand colonial attitudes of his superiors, notably the imperious police commissioner, Nigel Dunston-Smith (a perfectly blustery Duval Lang).

Preview: Nine Dragons at the RMTC

7 years ago

Duration 1:57

A whodunit original crime story set in 1920s Hong Kong, this thriller runs from Oct. 26 - Nov. 11 at the Tom Hendry Warehouse.

When a serial killer dubbed "the Kowloon Ripper" emerges, the commissioner and his sympathetic but ineffective superintendent, Paul Beverley (Scott Bellis) assign Tommy a partner, Scotsman Sean Heaney (Toby Hughes, bringing subtle comic charm to the role). He'sa novice homicide detective who can nominally act as Tommy's "superior" thus avoiding the unseemly appearance of a "native" leading an investigation while letting the better detective do the heavy lifting.

Though Nine Dragonsgets bogged down at points in its procedural elements, there's enough of a tangled mystery here to please crime drama fans.

But it's the questions of culture, colonialism and power that really engage, especially as Tommybegins to investigate Victor Fung (Winnipeg's Daniel Chen, making an impressive professional debut). Anightclub owner who is the son of a wealthy Chinese businessman, Fung has status because of his money, but has become so fully assimilated he doesn't even speak his native tongue.

Issues of power and privilege come up as well in Tommy's relationship with Dr. Mary Weir (a suitably steely Natascha Girgis), who is a rarity as a female coroner and is a good one.Like Tommy, she is held back by prejudice and traditional power structures.

All of this could quickly become very heavy-handed, but Sy balances his script smartly between police procedural and exploration of cultural dynamics, and even throws in enough clever one-liners to occasionally lighten a dark tone.

He also crafts a group of well-rounded characters who draw on familiar types, but are fleshed out with enough nuance to be believable and interesting.

Under director Craig Hall (the artistic director of Calgary's Vertigo Theatre, where this world premiere co-production between the Royal MTC, Vertigo and Richmond's Gateway Theatre opened earlier in October), the top-notch cast brings those characters vividly to life.

There are great moments from all the cast members, but Ng grounds the production with a nicely layered take on Tommy, a cop caught between his sense of justice and his work in a colonial system that's anything but just.

The cast handles the smart pacing of Hall's 135-minute production impressively.

Sy's play is, on the surface, a reasonably good murder mystery with an interesting setting. But like all good mysteries, there's more here than initially meets the eye and that's what gives Nine Dragons its bite.

Nine Dragons runs at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre's Tom Hendry Warehouse until Nov. 11.