The British acting industry is upper class, white, and Western. Everyone who doesn’t fit in that combination is pigeonholed and typecast. A young Chinese actress is rapidly spiralling. Every casting call wants her to be a sensual (read: sexual) sex worker named Mei, or Lily, or Wendy, or Kim. She's always joined by the same handful of other Asian women in the room, and she becomes obsessed with one of them, Eve. Gawa Leung (who also wrote the piece), Lorraine Yu, and JJ Lam stand in front of us, auditioning for their parts. We get to decide who plays whom (and, yes, they know every part).
Once the Hater and the Hatee have been chosen, we embark on a bewildering ride through stalking, impulsive actions, intrusive thoughts, and sheer malice. Underneath all the dry, snappy, irresistible humour lies a decisive social satire. Leung pulls no punches in her takedown of the entertainment business, but she mostly focuses on the lasting effects of growing up with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Though the Hater’s exploits, which are truly awful and unhinged, cannot be excused, we find ourselves sympathising.
As she hilariously verbalises thoughts that nobody would ever admit to having, the comedy shifts to a deceptive drama. Anger, loneliness, and domestic violence seize the narrative, altering the comic rhythm. A darkness pervades the storytelling, which remains firmly rooted in witty and ruthless sarcasm, but now covers emotional repression, parental pressure, and generational trauma too. The switch-up is sneaky and thoroughly smooth. Megan Brewer’s direction emphasises the eclecticism of the script.
It’s an addictive project. As our antihero loses the plot and her sabotage becomes more wacky and extreme, an early allegory of Leung’s comes up again and again, pushing the characters towards a reckoning of sorts. There’s no resolution, no answer to her obsessive compulsion, just a potential explanation that doesn’t help anyone—not the Hater, not her audience. If there’s one criticism that needs to be put forward, is that the ending is rushed. Sure, the limitations of the Fringe might be the cause here, but that’s definitely something to consider. The play is otherwise remarkable and utterly captivating.
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