But this prelude was no real indicator for just how eclectic and electrifying the evening would be, with its presentations and repetitions of duality befitting of the Traverse —gender, time (past and future), human and artificial intelligence — played out across the story: a married couple’s happiness is shattered by the discovery of the man’s extra-marital affair while his wife is pregnant with their child. The couple look to science to erase the unhappy memories of this experience by implanting memories of happy constructs via a chip. 

The performances by the two singer-actors, a young woman, Ashley Lin, outfitted in a black suit and older man, Yuen Siu-fai, in a light-coloured traditional Chinese cheung sam, was essentially a dialogue in speech and song. In fact, the music was centre stage —a cradle for the theatrical performances, and would have made for an intimate and enjoyable evening in and of itself.

It was an unlikely, unfathomable pairing of nanyin and jazz — a conversation between eastern and western musical traditions that somehow worked: with the nanyin seemingly representing the ‘should’ (rational, rule-abiding tradition), versus the ‘want’ of the emotional jazzy soundtrack, representing untethered life energy. It was a surprise to learn that though seemingly old versus modern, both of these musical genres actually date from the same time — the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).