Writer: Yuhe Tian
Director: Libby Yunqian Lyu
“I have daddy issues, I have boyfriend issues, I have grief issues,” Lanzhou tells her therapist, who exists here only as a disembodied voice. A 30-year-old Chinese woman in London is trying to come to terms with the loss of her beloved grandparents and, with them, her sense of home. Told by her father not to fly back for her grandmother’s funeral during the pandemic, Lanzhou is working through the loss she feels after not being able to say goodbye.
Yuhe Tian’s Tell Me Everything is a relatively simple play that explores complex themes: sadness, identity and deracination. It animates, sometimes uncomfortably, the main character’s internal argument between traditional Chinese philosophies of stoical repression and Western models of self-expression.
Shanshan Wu plays Lanzhou with range and dedication, recreating the carefree physicality of childhood and the embittered seriousness of feeling cut off from family in a foreign country where everything is different. Real tears run down her cheeks as she remembers the unforgettable past. In a long white shirt, surveying the proceedings, Shiwei Chen is a narrator who can articulate past events, time lapses, even Lanzhou’s interior monologue.
Chen also becomes Lanzhou’s grandmother, wrapping a patchwork apron round the flowing shirt and donning a pair of wire-rimmed specs to peer at her new smartphone. Jieming Lan as costume designer has kept the changes simple but effective. The grandmother speaks Mandarin with surtitles projected onto a curtain at the back, emphasising the cultural and emotional discontinuity of the protagonist’s new English-speaking life.
The therapist tells the story of a chestnut tree cut down to make a boat, which is illustrated using shadow projections. The metaphors of acknowledging loss in order to move on parallel ancient tales like the empty boat parable of Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi about releasing anger. This figurative absolution is a satisfying shift from needy anecdotes about Lanzhou’s love life (“I have a theory about how long it takes a boyfriend to reply to a text”, she tells the invisible therapist).
Naomi (Ruizhi) Zhang’s set designer is suitably minimalist. Two chairs with sheepskin rugs, a table and a magical lamp almost fill an intimate space that becomes a beach, a cinema, an old house, as well as the therapist’s office. Tracy Xiaoyu Hua’s stark lighting helps shift the scene. Together with movement director Yumeng Hu, director/dramaturg Libby Yunqian Lyu has built an engaging show. Occasionally, the staging, generally quite static, blocks the surtitles, but there is a physical freedom in the scenes that recreate childhood memories. There is a lovely choreographic precision to the scene changes with chairs set down in sync.
The music that underscores key moments sometimes resembles a film soundtrack. There is also a cinematic quality to the intercutting of flashback, dream and reality, the overlaying of adult issues, childhood happiness, and the traumas in between. Tell me Everything mixes remembered details (instant noodles, ice lollies) with therapy tricks (if you could write a letter to your childhood home, what would you tell it?)
An enthusiastic cast and crew have worked hard on this show with its intimate perspective on fractured identities. As a piece of theatre, it still feels a little unpolished; it would be nice to see them tackle something more nuanced and accomplished. But these impressively committed performers, designers, and theatre-makers are bringing new voices to London stages.
Runs until 14 August 2026
Camden Fringe 2026 runs until 30 August
