Miss Peony, at Canberra Theatre, is written in English, Mandarin and Cantonese

It's not every day that Chan can perform an entire play in her mother tongue of Cantonese, and yet this Australian-written and produced production - which is now on at Canberra Theatre - is offering this rare opportunity to do just that.

Miss Peony, which is written by Michelle Law - weaves English, Mandarin and Cantonese throughout the entire production, with surtitles in all three languages.

While surtitles - subtitles for the stage - are common practice for opera, it is a rare addition for other theatre productions.

"The surtitles affect the performance a bit as well because everything has to be in sync," Chan said.

"The punch lines, the jokes all have to come at the right time. Sometimes too early is no good, too quick is no good. So that is also part of the play."

From a technical side, behind the scenes it is someone's role to trigger every surtitle, in time to the actor's speech on stage.

As for the translating side of things, it's more complicated than simply translating one language straight into the other two.

"Especially Cantonese, it's not a line-by-line translation. It's a dialect, it's not a proper language," Chan said.

"A lot of what I say cannot be written out. What was being translated up there is actually like the news reading, and then you have to match the English. But then when I deliver it, it can be different and the jokes are very different as well.

"It doesn't make sense when they say a joke in English, when written in Cantonese and we have a lot of Cantonese audience, right? They will not find that funny. So the translator's amazing. She adapted the jokes into Cantonese jokes."

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Miss Peony tells the story of Lily, played by Stephanie Jack, a young Chinese-Australian woman who has to join and compete in the Miss Peony pageant to stop her grandmother (or poh poh) Adeline, played by Chan, from haunting her and to allow her to pass into the afterlife.

The two characters struggle with the generational gap - on one side Lily is caught between the country grew up in and her heritage, while Poh Poh has dedicated her life to ensuring the younger generation continues to embrace their culture.

In fact, Poh Poh, who was a famed beauty queen from Hong Kong, started the Miss Peony pageant to help preserve Chinese culture.

But while Poh Poh believes she's showing her granddaughter tough love, Lily believes her hand is being forced.

"It can be hard for instance my generation or younger people to stomach that kind of love in a way," Jack said.

"But I do think that there is a place for it. And there's also a middle ground that I think they - Adeline and Lily - come to in the play, which is beautiful.

"And Lily is also quite defensive and vulnerable around Poh Poh. But she wants that connection as well. It goes both ways. Lily wants it and needs it too."

Miss Peony is at the Canberra Theatre Centre until Saturday. Tickets from canberratheatrecentre.com.au

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