Reviewed by Nikki Cotter

Opening Night verdict ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Marking the opening of Manchester International Festival, Kimber Lee’s ‘Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play’ officially opened at the Royal Exchange this weekend, resulting in a thunderous standing ovation which will no doubt be repeated nightly during the four week run.

Lee highlights the absurdity of the stereotypical portrayal of Asian women in Western created entertainment with razor sharp skill and wonderful wit, resulting in a fierce and fast paced piece that somehow remains laugh out loud funny while poignantly challenging the interpretations we’ve been served for generations.

Taking a dive into the likes of Madam Butterfly, South Pacific, Miss Saigon and M*A*S*H, Lee quickly and convincingly shows us just how absurd the characters in these oh so familiar pieces are.

Opening with an initial examination of Madam Butterfly which received its US premiere in 1906, Kim (Mei Mac) is offered as a bride by her mother Cio Cio (Lourdes Faberes) to the square jawed, all-American Clark (Tom Weston-Jones) in a bid for a better life for the whole family. Their American dream however never materialised as the inevitable tragic, yet devastatingly poetic, consequences of that fateful romance play out. This scene is then repeated multiple times albeit in different decades as South Pacific, M*A*S*H and Miss Saigon take their turn under the microscope. The repetition cleverly highlighting the cliches accepted so willingly by many audiences over the years.

Narrator Rochelle Rose guides us brilliantly through each scene, acting both as translator for Clark who throws out random words linked vaguely to the general location whilst assuming he’s speaking fluently to his new bride and author of the piece. Her easy delivery highlighting further the absurdity of the assumptions made by the writers of each tragic story. Each repetition grows more frenetic and absurd as Director Roy Alexander Weise ramps up the physicality for our tragic heroine Kim (Mei Mac).

Following the blistering first hour the second part of the play moves to the more sedate surroundings of a modern day New York loft apartment where the opportunity for Kim to examine whether anything has actually changed occurs. Interestingly it is also at this point that Lourdes Faberes delivers a speech reminiscing about how the older generation had no objections to how they were portrayed and instead took delight in seeing themselves represented on stage.

This play never tells us what we should think or feel, its beauty lies in its ability to make us question ourselves and our own complicity in misrepresentation and issues of race. The complexity presented before us is made engagingly accessible, whilst offering a hope for the future that the misrepresentations and the damage caused can become confined to the history books. Hugely entertaining theatre that speaks loudly and proudly from the heart.

UNTITLED F*CK M*SS S**GON PLAY is on at Manchester’s Royal Exchange theatre until 22nd July tickets available here.