A young British-Chinese woman falls in love with a wealthier white boy and the relationship goes wrong, gradually and then suddenly, in this assured 75-minute monologue, written by Ava Wong Davies and compellingly performed by Sabrina Wu. It has echoes of Kristen Roupenian’s viral New Yorker story Cat Person but explores issues beyond gaslighting and toxic masculinity. Underneath, it’s a story about privilege.
Nina grew up in her parents’ Chinese restaurant, switching between English and Cantonese, chewing her cuticles and apparently desperate to escape. When we meet her she’s in a grotty flatshare in Haringey, working as a receptionist for a handsy boss, possibly drinking and smoking a bit much (but weren’t we all, at her age?).
The man she meets has a writing career and a lifestyle bankrolled by his dad’s property empire (this is the first time I’ve heard a character in a play described as a ‘poet’ without it being screamingly embarrassing). Davies is very good on the way social and financial security breeds entitlement, and how the confident can manipulate the precarious. I was enthralled from beginning to end.
It helps that Wong Davies breaks up the potential monotony inherent in a monologue by alternating between the first and second person: Nina recounts the arc of the relationship to us and to her ex. The use of “you”, affectionate or accusatory, brings him – and the increasingly horrified friends and strangers observing from the outside – more sharply into focus.
Monologues can also be wafty and unrooted but Wong Davies convincingly evokes place and sensation: the heat of a first sexual encounter on a flatmate’s bed; the off-balance shame of being drunk at a wedding; the quickening alarm of being in a car driven too fast. I particularly liked Nina’s reference to feeling “hangover-sticky”.
Wu’s performance is finely modulated and very subtle, slowly stoking a sense of disquiet. Dressed in schlumpy loungewear, she roams Mydd Pharo’s set of a bed on a dais surrounded by banks of mud, getting steadily dirtier. The set is one of the weaker elements here – I’ve also got no idea what the title means – but Jai Morjaria’s lighting is excellent.
That the show felt so polished on opening night is all the more remarkable given the problems it faced. Director Anna Himali Howard had to leave the production in week three of rehearsals and Izzy Rabey stepped in to work alongside associate director Jasmine Teo. For the last two preview performances this week Wu was indisposed, and Wong Davies had to read the play from the stage.
The author is a former theatre critic, and withdrew from the judging panel of the Evening Standard’s 2022 Theatre Awards when this play was accepted by the Royal Court. I can say with a clear conscience that our loss is definitely the stage’s gain.
