Bear hugs

'It's about a China you can imagine without ever going there. Butit's also about an Edinburgh you can imagine without ever goingthere. It's about the way people connect in their imaginations." SoRona Munro, prolific Scots playwright and screenwriter, describesPandas, her new play for Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre.

The drama - which is being promoted as a "romantic comedy-thriller" - is a tale of three love affairs and the criminalitysurrounding some stolen Chinese rugs. In particular, Munro wasinspired by two seemingly unrelated subjects, namely the burgeoningrise of China as a global superpower and the growth in internetdating.

"I was desperate to write a play about China," she explains."It's somewhere I've always wanted to visit. Everyone's saying thatit's going to become the dominant nation on the planet in the nearfuture. Then there's its history and its legends. It's just thishuge, mysterious country that really occupied my imagination."

As is often the case with imagination, however, Munro - who alsohas a play about the Russian space programme, Little Eagles, openingon April 16 at the Hampstead Theatre in London in a RoyalShakespeare Company production - found that her train of thoughtdidn't stop at the destination she originally envisaged. "Partlybecause I never got the opportunity to go to China, and partlybecause I created characters who took me in surprising directions,instead of being a big play about China, it became a little lovestory. It's one of those plays which seems to have almost dreameditself."

When we meet two of those characters - a Chinese woman called LinHan and a Chinese entrepreneur called Jie-Hui - they have only justmet. They feel like they know each other, however, having exchanged536 messages and 72 pictures via email. The romance between Lin Hanand Jie-Hui becomes embroiled in some serious goings-on in thelatter's company, including the shooting of his business partner.Like anyone who has written a play which is defined, partly atleast, as a thriller, Munro is understandably reticent about givingaway key aspects of the plot.

What she will say, however, is that she found it "nerve-wracking" to write a play about a culture which is so distinct fromher own. "You think, 'Who the hell am I to write about someone froma completely different culture and background?' I'm afraid what Idecided to do was just to take a deep breath and say to myself, 'OK,I'm just going to throw myself on the mercy of the Chinese actorsand tell them that I may have got some of this horribly wrong.'"

In the end, the writer has been greatly encouraged by thesupportive comments of the Chinese actors Crystal Yu (who featuredin the recent film Shanghai, with Li Gong and John Cusack, and has astarring role in Madonna's advert for H&M) and Siu Hun Li (who isfrom Edinburgh). "Either they're being really nice to me," Munrosays, "or the gamble's worked."

If the writing of Pandas seems like a gamble, try Oranges AndSunshine, the new movie from Jim Loach (son of stellar Britishfilmmaker Ken Loach), for which Munro has written the screenplay.The film - which stars Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving and David Wenham -was inspired by a book by Margaret Humphreys, the Nottingham socialworker who uncovered the scandal of the forced migration of 130,000British children in care, mainly to Australia. Many were told thelie that their parents were dead. Promised "oranges and sunshine" onthe other side of the world, they often faced hard labour and abuse.

Munro, who wrote the screenplay for Ken Loach's 1994 movieLadybird Ladybird, admits to having been a little wary of the offerto write for Jim Loach's film. "Initially I had a slight resistance.I do tend to get put in a box as a writer of 'the harrowing truestory of ... '. Part of me was thinking, 'You should consideryourself bloody lucky to be writing a film', but the other part ofme was saying, 'but I want to write a different kind of film.'"

She was won over, however, by "a combination of reading the book -absorbing how large this issue had been and how many people it hadaffected - and getting to know Jim".

Loach Jnr is, she says, very much his own film director, with hisown style. He does, however, have some of the best traits of hisfather. "He is very collaborative, which is very rare in film andtelly. Ken's very like that, too. Jim also has great certainty."

Ultimately, Munro believes that Loach's directing, and the actingof a superb cast, have managed to strike the right balance betweenthe agonies of the subject matter and the audience's ability toendure the emotional pain being portrayed in the screen. "My son,who's 20, and a couple of his friends came to see it, and what theysaid was that they had sat down thinking, "This is going to bedifficult", but, a few minutes in they realised it was going to bereally watchable. What I hope we've pulled off is to make adifficult subject bearable to watch without blunting its impact."

Pandas is at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, April 19-May 7.Oranges And Sunshine is in cinemas now; see review on page 58