Review
2023
untitled f*ck
YOUNG VIC
★★★★★
TILL NOV 4TH, 2024
24 SEPTEMBER, 2023
all images © JOSHUA PHARO
m*ss s**gon play
Walking away from untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play was hard. The challenge I was facing wasn’t just that this was a groundbreaking production; it was this deep sorrow over the subject matter. There are few audiences in the world that truly ‘get’ satire the way British audiences do. There is something special about how the British don’t hold onto things so dearly. We allow ourselves to laugh at the stupidity of a given situation, and we tend to use satire in a way that lets creatives and audiences alike explore salient topics that they may never have tried to explore before.
Playwright Kimber Lee’s untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play had its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival earlier this year before being transferred to London's Young Vic Theatre. The MIF is the perfect festival to premiere this production. And to say that the energy during press night at the Young Vic was palpable would make for a rather big understatement. And, once again, on this walk home, a sense of anger overtook me and left me with this bugging question: why is it always up to the minorities to create works that highlight the social, cultural, and political inequality they face and the dangers of misrepresentation and underrepresentation in the media? If I were to be offered a follow-up question, I would continue with: Why are minorities told to ‘bide their time?’
The more I thought of these questions, the more I began to feel an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. The fight for representation shouldn’t take this long. The fight to be recognised for who you are and the significant contribution you made and continue to make to society should not still be far off in the distance. Taking a deep breath, I revisited in my mind Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Hollywood. I know, it’s a slightly strange thing to reach for, but it was the only contemporary reference I could think of that featured Wong Liu Tsong, aka Anna May Wong, the legendary Chinese-American actress. Anna May Wong became ‘a first’ in many ways, with the highest accolade being that she was the first Chinese-American actress to gain international recognition. In the series, Murphy tries to honour Anna May Wong by re-imagining her history, and instead of her losing the lead role of a 'Chinese villager' in The Good Earth (1937) to Luise Rainer, who was white (and incidentally really won the Best Actress Academy Award for this role).
Michelle Krusiec, who plays Anna May Wong, brought a sense of urgent beauty to every scene she was in. This offered a fascinating insight into both the real and imagined narratives of her life and her experiences in Hollywood. The reality is always more painful than the one created, as Krusiec injects something so pure, honest, and real into the actress's identity that had, to some extent, been long forgotten. So good was Krusiec’s performance that it's helped reinvigorate interest in Anna May Wong and the contribution she made to Hollywood. But like so many women of colour before and long after her, Anna May Wong became the victim of deep-rooted ignorance and racism.
You are probably wondering why I am spending so much time talking about Anna May Wong and the Golden Age of Hollywood when you're here for my review of Kimber Lee’s untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play. A valid question and one I believe can be justifiably answered by bridging this relationship between Hollywood storytelling, which almost exclusively meant stories written by white, privileged men, who have been free to exploit minorities identity, trauma, and representation. To unpack this, I want to take a quick look at Lee’s title, untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play, note where the asterisks have been placed. You can’t avoid the asterisk or the muted words or phrases in the media these days, as society is so afraid of upsetting anyone. So they mute or take out vowels as a way to not offend their audiences. Some might call this oversensitive, but I would just call it cautious.
The themes within Lee’s play and the subject matter that is explored further illustrate just how salient our focus on fairer representation across all media is. Placing asterisks over the words m*ss s**gon shows clear intentions on the part of the playwright. Across social media, certain words are now muted or edited to lessen their impact for fear of triggering or upsetting someone, and I couldn’t help but feel that from the start, Lee is telling the audience everything isn’t alright and she is aware that m*ss s**gon may be trigger for some of her audience. This struggle for appropriate representation needs to start by looking at the past and how shows, films, and series have caused harm to generations of minorities.
Productions like Miss Saigon, South Pacific, MASH, Madame Butterfly, etc. depict an Asian stereotype that is vulgar and ignorant, and the product material is written by white men for a predominantly mainstream Western audience. There is no attempt to offer any sense of humanity or to give a genuine voice to the Asian men and women who anchor these productions. And it is here, in the brutality of Lee's text, that there is no attempt to sugarcoat what has happened and what continues to happen with regards to Asian narratives.
Both Mei Mac, Kim, and Lourdes Faberes, Kim's mother, are an incredible duo who maintain this breathtaking pace that is etched in every word of Lee's text. At the core of this production is a satirical approach to such a powerful story that, at times, leaves you on the floor in fits of laughter. And yet, somehow, Lee has been able to cleverly illustrate to the audience Kim's pain and frustration. After the first scene, there is a repetition of Kim's experience that leads to an inevitable outcome. In each of these moments, Mac is able to realise a pain and helplessness that can only come from a lived experience and is achieved in such an effective way. There is an interesting aside later on in the play as the audience realises there has been no distinction between the character 'Kim', which, as pointed out, is a Korean surname and not a Japanese, Vietnamese, or Pacific islander name.
The James Menzies-Kitchin Award-winner, Roy Alexander Weise, is a visionary director. He's a director who has offered a valuable, honest, and real sense of understanding and compassion for Lee's text, which elevates it greatly. Through each of the scenes, the powerful monologues delivered by Mac and Faberes, coupled with the inventive role of the narrator, Rochelle Rose, Weise has created a show that allows you to laugh, allows you to connect with several painful truths, and most importantly, allows his audiences to listen.
Lee's text needed a creative team that could really, and I mean genuinely, connect with what she was trying to say. Good writing, performances, and directing need to align for a production like untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play, and nothing can be put to chance. As the production edges towards the monologues from Mac and Faberes, we now see a brother and sister, the former more comfortable with his life and the latter, Kim, still feeling trapped. They have white partners, they're part of Western society, and they are no longer put in stereotypical pigeonholes, so why is Kim still uncomfortable?
Trauma.
"Productions like Miss Saigon, South Pacific, MASH, Madame Butterfly, etc. depict an Asian stereotype that is vulgar and ignorant, and the product material is written by white men for a predominantly mainstream Western audience."
The themes within Lee’s play and the subject matter that is explored further illustrate just how salient our focus on fairer representation across all media is. Placing asterisks over the words m*ss s**gon shows clear intentions on the part of the playwright. Across social media, certain words are now muted or edited to lessen their impact for fear of triggering or upsetting someone, and I couldn’t help but feel that from the start, Lee is telling the audience everything isn’t alright and she is aware that m*ss s**gon may be trigger for some of her audience. This struggle for appropriate representation needs to start by looking at the past and how shows, films, and series have caused harm to generations of minorities.
Productions like Miss Saigon, South Pacific, MASH, Madame Butterfly, etc. depict an Asian stereotype that is vulgar and ignorant, and the product material is written by white men for a predominantly mainstream Western audience. There is no attempt to offer any sense of humanity or to give a genuine voice to the Asian men and women who anchor these productions. And it is here, in the brutality of Lee's text, that there is no attempt to sugarcoat what has happened and what continues to happen with regards to Asian narratives.
Both Mei Mac, Kim, and Lourdes Faberes, Kim's mother, are an incredible duo who maintain this breathtaking pace that is etched in every word of Lee's text. At the core of this production is a satirical approach to such a powerful story that, at times, leaves you on the floor in fits of laughter. And yet, somehow, Lee has been able to cleverly illustrate to the audience Kim's pain and frustration. After the first scene, there is a repetition of Kim's experience that leads to an inevitable outcome. In each of these moments, Mac is able to realise a pain and helplessness that can only come from a lived experience and is achieved in such an effective way. There is an interesting aside later on in the play as the audience realises there has been no distinction between the character 'Kim', which, as pointed out, is a Korean surname and not a Japanese, Vietnamese, or Pacific islander name.
The James Menzies-Kitchin Award-winner, Roy Alexander Jones, is a visionary director. He's a director who has offered a valuable, honest, and real sense of understanding and compassion for Lee's text, which elevates it greatly. Through each of the scenes, the powerful monologues delivered by Mac and Faberes, coupled with the inventive role of the narrator, Rochelle Rose, Joness has created a show that allows you to laugh, allows you to connect with several painful truths, and most importantly, allows his audiences to listen.
Lee's text needed a creative team that could really, and I mean genuinely, connect with what she was trying to say. Good writing, performances, and directing need to align for a production like untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play, and nothing can be put to chance. As the production edges towards the monologues from Mac and Faberes, we now see a brother and sister, the former more comfortable with his life and the latter, Kim, still feeling trapped. They have white partners, they're part of Western society, and they are no longer put in stereotypical pigeonholes, so why is Kim still uncomfortable?
Trauma.
Even if we only go as far back as the 1900s, the depictions of Asian men and women were never in a positive light, as Lee illustrates with f*ck m*ss s**gon play. Asian families and communities are seen as poor, dirty, uneducated, overly sexualized, and morally corrupt. Their lives aren't worthy of knowledge, understanding, or respect—incredibly illustrated by American Officer Tom Weston-Jones. The American Officer, with his terrible language skills that are more offensive than helpful, knows he's the "golden goose," and he knows that Kim and her family see him as the only way for them to get to America.
Thus begins this generational shame and struggle for one's identity. For Kim and her mother, America is really the only goal; there is little life or opportunity around them, so they know they're going to have to assimilate into their new Western culture. Conflict continues to grow within us as we fight to claim our authentic voice that reconnects us to our own history, family, and culture. For Kim, sitting with her family, I felt her longing and her heartbreak for what they had all given up, and I also felt this deep-rooted pain of always having to contend with the historical references to their ancestors.
untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play is a play that should inspire others to take ownership of their history, their present, and their future.