The deep humanity of The Lower Depths

IF there are a few things that Mandarin theatre company Nine Years Theatre consistently scores on, it is the fine ensemble acting, astute direction and deep humanity that pervades the stories it chooses to tell.

Its latest work, The Lower Depths, is no different.

Director-translator Nelson Chia has taken a classic Russian proletarian drama about a group of pitifully poor people living in a dosshouse and transposed it to a more generic setting comprised of bunkbeds, broken furniture and pieces of cloth strung together as a backdrop.