This musical comes with impressive credentials: based on the cult novel by Angela S Choi (now Kate Kamen) and produced by the team behind the musical Six, it takes the cutesy Hello Kitty motif and blends it with murderous black comedy to send up stereotypes of east Asian femininity.
It starts off like a contemporary version of Six, with five American performers of east Asian heritage standing in formation, almost all in sleek, monochromatic black. Co-adapted by Gail Rastorfer and Kurt Johns, the show opens with the title number and proceeds to tell the story of Fiona Yu (Sami Ma) a 30-year-old Chinese American lawyer, and virgin. She is intent on defying the reductive cliches about east Asian womanhood in the white world at large, as well as family pressures at home, where her father is intent on getting her married.
The way forward for Fiona is self-sufficiency, which is where Mr Happy, her trusty dildo, comes in handy. After reuniting with her old friend, Sean, who taught her how to deal with bullies at school (hitting them over the head with a bag of rocks), her self-determination becomes several shades darker, and she sets off on a baroque trail that is slightly reminiscent of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer.
Cast members (including Jully Lee, Lennox T Duong, Amy Keum and Ann Hu) double up to play a host of types, from Fiona’s father to grandmother and the men she meets through matchmaking.
The music by Cecilia Lin has a catchy beat, even if the songs are not memorable in themselves, and the lyrics by Jessica Wu are funny but short of razor sharp. The singing is wobbly, sometimes weak, which takes the edge off the show’s slickness. The story takes some time to find its murderous tone too and it seems like a coming-of-age tale for a little too long before we get to its darker heart, when it then seems to reset within the revenge crime genre.
The central concept is a strong one, and it is charmingly performed by a kickass cast, but it is not quite the killer show that it has the potential to become.
