Upstaged Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Winner of the inaugural Bruntwood International Prize in 2019, Kimber Lee’s untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play is a fast-paced, fiercely funny and stinging satirical response to the cliched representation of Asian women in colonialist dramas.
Laugh-out-loud funny and ferociously confrontational
With a running time of just under two hours, the show races through the tropes and stereotypes that have played out on stage and in films and television throughout the ages. Directed by Roy Alexander Weise, the play opens in 1906 Japan, the setting for Madama Butterfly, and the work that influenced Miss Saigon, the musical blasted in its title.
At the centre of the play is young, exotic peasant Kim. She is told to get over the local lad that sells fish and ordered to get together with an American so that she may live a more prosperous life. Cue a GI called Clark (who hilariously talks using Japanese-sounding words like origami and Haribo), who arrives on a ship and unknowingly marries Kim, in a ceremony performed by her overbearing mother, Rosie. Kim and Clark spend the night together before he abandons her, only to return four years later with his wife, Evelyn, to claim his child. Left alone, Kim stabs herself.
Looping through this same story again and again, at different points in time but always with the same ending, we are treated to pastiches of South Pacific and M*A*S*H before a more confrontational Kim emerges in the present day.
This play is superb in the way it never tries to tell people how to think or act.
Kimber Lee cleverly sets the second part of the play up as a dinner party where the impact of these cultural narratives and racial stereotypes are considered, not just in art but also in real life. Balanced and powerfully performed, perspectives include denial and assimilation alongside blazing resistance – and this play is superb in the way it never tries to tell people how to think or act.
Laugh-out-loud funny and ferociously confrontational, an excellent ensemble – led by the brilliant Mei Mac as Kim – bring a truly important and entertaining play to life. Highly recommended.
-Kristy Stott
Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play runs at the Royal Exchange, as part of Manchester International Festival, until 22 July.