Dear Lihua – Canal Café Theatre

‘Dear Lihua’ is a highly accomplished piece of theatre, delicately constructed and performed with remarkable tenderness. Written by Xinyi Chen and directed by Zhaoyi Ying, this bilingual English and Mandarin production explore the loneliness of living abroad, the strain of communicating in a language that is not your own and the painful compromises sometimes demanded by cultural assimilation.

After dying in London, Qiuqiu awakens in an “English-speaking heaven”, where even the afterlife is governed by bureaucracy and paperwork. To earn enough points to return to China, she is assigned to the “Department of Unanswered Letters” by God, sorting through correspondence that never received a reply. Among the abandoned words, she repeatedly encounters letters addressed to Lihua, gradually uncovering a story that resonates deeply with her own displacement and childhood in China.

It is an inventive premise, blending the absurdity of an immigration office with the dreamlike uncertainty of purgatory. The points system and officious procedures generate lightly comic moments, but the humour never diminishes the production’s emotional sincerity. Instead, it makes the underlying sadness more affecting. As Qiuqiu’s Mandarin begins to disappear, the play asks what may be lost when adapting to another country becomes inseparable from surrendering parts of oneself.

Zoe Rowe gives a beautifully measured performance as Qiuqiu, capturing both her bewilderment and growing desperation without forcing the emotion. Naomi Crosby, as Barbara, and Rafi Essex, as God3456, are equally accomplished. Each performer brings a distinctive energy to the production, yet their work remains impressively balanced, and they each listen and respond to one another with precision, allowing the humour, tension and tenderness to emerge naturally.

Eizo Zhao’s quirky set design fills the Canal Café Theatre’s small performance space remarkably well. Its ordered clutter evokes both an archive and an administrative waiting room, creating a world that feels simultaneously mundane and otherworldly. Yuqing Wang’s lighting and Yu-Ting Yeh’s sound design further supports the production’s shifting emotional atmosphere.

At just 50 minutes, ‘Dear Lihua’ is concise without feeling slight, thoughtful, imaginative and incredibly touching. It finds something universal within a culturally specific experience. This is carefully crafted fringe theatre with intelligence, compassion and a quietly devastating emotional heart, and comes highly recommended.  Part of Camden Fringe, there is one more showing of the work on 20^th August at Canal Café Theatre. Tickets are available at: https://camdenfringe.com/events/dear-lihua

Reviewer: Alan Stuart Malin

Reviewed: 19^th August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating: