Single Asian Female, April 6, 2019 ***

By Michelle Law, production by La Boite, Brisbane
At Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne until April 21, 2019 
Reviewer: Kate Herbert (reviewed on Sun 7 April 2019)
Stars:***
This review also published in Herald Sun in print on Tues 9 April 2019, & online at H-Sun Comedy Festival Reviews on Mon 8 April, 2019. KH

Courtney Stewart, Hsiao-Ling Tang, Jing-Xuan-Chan_Photo Dylan Evans

Michelle Law’s comedy-drama, Single Asian Female, may be about an Asian-Australian family named Wong, but other Aussie families of all backgrounds share many of the socio-cultural issues and expectations confronting the Wongs.  

Pearl (Hsiao-Ling Tang), over-protective matriarch of the Wong family, struggles to keep her Chinese restaurant afloat after her messy divorce, while wrangling her Australian-born daughters, Zoe (Jing-Xuan Chan) and Mei (Courtney Stewart).

Zoe, a 29-year old concert violinist, faces moving home to live with mum on the Sunshine Coast while dabbling in disastrous online dating. Meanwhile, 17-year old Mei, desperate to be accepted by the mean girls at school, tries to deny, or even delete, her Asian heritage.

Law’s play deals with stereotyping of Asian immigrants and objectification of Asian women, as well as the often hilarious consequences of living in a mixed cultural family landscape.

Littered amongst the many laughs are more telling moments concerning racism, sexism, bullying, anxiety and political bias as well as internal issues arising in Asian-Australian families.

The play is most successful when it stops playing stereotypes – both Asian and Aussie bogan – and allows characters to inhabit their story and expand the narrative. This happens in the final 20 minutes of the play, which is a bit late.

The characters are under-developed and remain two-dimensional until the latter part of the play, but the problem is that early scenes often reference the Australia of 40 years ago.

The dialogue – both comic and dramatic – often feels laboured, particularly when it shoehorns information about characters or social issues into scenes.

Claire Christian’s direction pushes the comic elements of Law’s script by aiming for slapstick and a situation comedy style, but the performances do not always reach the requisite comic heights.

Single Asian Female may be no masterpiece, but it is identification theatre that allows Asian-Australians to laugh at themselves – and this Melbourne audience certainly laughed.

by Kate Herbert