Winner of a London Fringe Award for Best Play, Porcelain now comes to Boston's SpeakEasy Stage, Feb. 5-21, opening Feb. 6. The drama concerns a gay Asian man who shoots his lover in a London public lavatory.

Porcelain, written by New Dramatist Chay Yew, was written while Yew was a playwright-in-residence at Mu-Lan Theatre Company in London. It premiered at the Et Cetera Theatre in 1992, and subsequently transferred to London's Royal Court Theatre.

Yew's first play, As If He Hears, was commissioned by Theatreworks in Singapore, where it was initially banned by their government. His A Language of Their Own was given a limited run at L.A.'s Celebration Theatre in 1994 and opened at New York's Public Theatre in 1995.

Yew is presently a resident artist and director of The Mark Taper's Asian Theatre Workshop and Resident Director of the East West Players, where his trilogy, Whitelands (comprised of Porcelain, A Language of Their Own and Half Lives), was presented in repertory in 1996.

The seven-year-old SpeakEasy Stage has presented such varied works as Love!Valour! Compassion! and Once On This Island. Steven Maler, who also directed SpeakEasy's subUrbia, will be directing Porcelain. For tickets to Porcelain at SpeakEasy Stage's home at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St., call (617) 426-0320.

-- By David Lefkowitz and Sean McGrath