Working titles of productions are never meant to stick. It is either that the writers and producers of a project have not settled on what they want to call it or they wish to keep the name under wraps. In the case of Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play it has stuck. The thinly veiled dig at the 1980s’ musical certainly sets the stall out for Kimber Lee’s satire, writes Christopher Peacock.
The show follows the life of Kim through different depictions of Asian characters in Western theatre and cinema. Kim is the young Asian love interest and Clark is the American Officer.
Here we run through a stereotypical American hero scene. The love interest offered to the American then follows a strange foreign marriage ritual, the American leaves only to return four years later with an American wife and then takes off with Kim’s child back to America for a better life, Kim then commits suicide.
This scene repeats through 70 years of Western theatre and cinema in the same style until the modern day. All that changes is the location. The culminating modern scene is the end goal of Asian-American portrayal in modern life. Interracial relationships and progression from working class to affluent middle class. However, Kim is lost in this scene despite having carried the pain and torment from all the previous decades of poverty, stolen children and suicide.
Lee’s script is very funny and although some of the gags are one-dimensional they importantly keep pushing back at the tropes of Western theatre’s depictions of Asian lives. Having Clark talk generic Asian gibberish whenever talking to the natives, and the narrator filling in the subtitles of the scene along with describing the action and its subtext is a highlight.
Rochelle Rose as the Narrator becomes less enthused as the actions repeat through the decades and Mei Mac as Kim wonderfully works through the despairing emotion and frustration of the ignorant depictions that are laboriously re-run through time.
What is apparent is that although stereotypes can be used as a shortcut, like any character trope that helps audiences get an overview of a character, they are lazy and when used to confirm a character’s race, are just racist. It highlights that nothing can take away from good writing. Characters are three-dimensional and no two are the same.
In 2023 we should be well and truly beyond churning out lazy archetypes. In an era where AI threatens the careers of writers, we need to be better at putting humanity in the characters we want to portray. If all you know of a culture is the depictions of that culture and its people from 20th century stage and screen you may want to get out into the world and experience them.
Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 until 4th November. Times: Mon – Sat 7.30pm. Wed & Sat matinees 2.30pm. Admission: £12 – £50
Booking: www.youngvic.org
