Home truths: playwright Edward Lam's latest offering is a real family affair

Yick-wah looked for four performers to take part in a project commissioned by Taiwan's Eslite Bookstore in 2005, more than a dozen actors answered the call. "I didn't want to turn them away," the playwright and theatre director says, "so I took them all in". Presented at the Tunnan branch of Eslite, was an experimental theatre piece that examined urban relationships through the German philosopher Walter Benjamin's ideas on capitalism.

Perhaps more significantly, that small-scale production marked the start of an extended period in which Lam opted to cast predominantly Taiwanese actors in his productions. This development was partly a consequence of his frustration with what he saw as the uninspiring drama education system of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, the dominant school for thespians in the city.

Nine years on, little appears to have changed when it comes to his casting choices. But the sudden departure of long-time collaborator Ewing Chan Yau-wing, who died of acute leukaemia earlier this month, means that Lam has lost the treasured set designer he had worked with since 2006's .

Hsieh Ying-hsun - the popular Taiwanese theatre actress who has worked with Lam many times since their first collaboration on - takes the lead role in his latest work, . She plays the eldest of four sisters in a broken family, whose patriarch walked out on them, never to be heard from again. Patty Chu, Joanne Deng and Rebecca Yip complete the sibling ensemble, each of whom have their own emotional issues.

"The topic of the play is not just about 'leftover women' looking to get married," says Lam. "Our scope is much wider. We're considering the reasons that girls would want to leave their family. Daughters have a complex relationship with their family and, in particular, their mother. In Chinese families, it is unfortunate that hatred, rather than love, binds people together."

By Lam's account, 90 per cent of the cast of his new Putonghua production is made up of Taiwanese actors, although he adds that "there are as yet no touring schedules planned for either Taiwan or the mainland". This is an anomaly for Lam, who is known for blockbuster shows such as (2011), the Denise Ho Wan-sze-starring musical that just concluded a 109-performance run in Taipei in December.