Benevolence – Review of 2025 Kevin Matthew Wong Play at Tarragon Theatre

Benevolence is an eighty-minute one-man show by Kevin Matthew Wong who is listed as the creator, writer, video and projection designer. The play is about the Hakka, a Chinese subgroup that is dispersed around the world and may have about 35,000 people in Canada.
Wong in a hyper-kinetic and exuberant performance tells a personal story about his experience as a Canadian of Hakka origin and gives us some information about the group. The play is built around the World Conference of Hakka that is to take place in Toronto and it is to be attended by some 3000 people. Wong, a man of the theatre, is asked to write a show for the elderly to be performed during the conference.
He knows he is Hakka because his grandmother told him so, but he does not know much more and he speaks with other people including his one-hundred-year-old grandmother trying to come up with ideas and substance for the show. We see a touching video of his interview with his grandmother in Vancouver as well as other videos of his visit to Hakka centers in British Columbia.
In the video of the interview with his grandmother we learn that she remembers very little about her life in China and in the end is coached by her daughters to give some sort of replies that are not satisfactory but they are funny. But she has lived through 18 presidents and 14 prime ministers and we find her sympathetic and humorous without being too informative.
Wong is a talented mimic and he imitates the speech of the people that he encounters to humorous effect. Sonia, the woman who asks him to write a play is a Chinese-Hakka-Jamaican-Canadian and Wong imitates her accent to good effect.
In Victoria and Vancouver there are pockets of Hakka immigrants and Wong shows us videos of the places that he sees and describes some of the people that he meets but he is the only one who speaks to us and imitates what he hears.
When Wong enters the playing area to begin the show, he bangs what look like pot lids loudly (Chinese instrument?) and invites three members of the audience to join him doing the same thing and dancing around. He is good at involving the audience and garners excellent reactions and laughter.
Wong tells the hilarious story about a Hakka mathematician asked to say something with “three”. (I have forgotten the exact question.) He draws a palm tree and answers in his accented English: “Palm tree.” He is given the number 33. He draws two palm trees and replies that he has palm tree, palm tree.
Trying to stump him, he is given the number 100. How do you get that? He draws three partial trees with “dirt” underneath and replies that he has a dirty tree and a turd three tines which of course makes 100. I butchered the joke but you should go and see the show and get its hilarious impact.
Benevolence gives us some fascinating information about the Hakkas who apparently migrated to America in 200 BCE and have settled in many parts of the world. This is a fun way of getting some history gratis. Go see it.

Benevolence by Kevin Matthew Wong in a premiere production by Tarragon Theatre in association with Why Not Theatre and Broadleaf Creative will run until May 4, 2025, at the Tarragon Theatre Extraspace, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario. www.tarragontheatre.com

Kevin Matthew Wong in Benevolence.  Photo: Jae Yang