School. For some it’s easy – a romp, a popularity contest to be won, a time of growth; for others, it is a minefield, impossible to know where and how to tread. The latter experience forms the basis of Laurinda, a new play co-written by comedian Diana Nguyen and Petra Kalive (who also directed), adapted from the award-winning 2014 young adult novel of the same name by acclaimed author Alice Pung.
Lucy Lam (Ngoc Phan) is a bright young lady from the fictional suburb of Stanley, where her father works at a carpet factory and her mother does so-called “home duties” as an outworker while caring for her baby brother. When Lucy receives a scholarship to attend the prestigious Laurinda Ladies College, her world changes. She leaves her public school friends behind and attempts to start on a new path in life among girls of a different upbringing. As she finds herself having to navigate the unspoken social rules that permeate the lives of the upper class, Lucy finds a friend in Katie (Fiona Choi), who is looked down upon by “The Cabinet” – a trio of girls (played by Gemma Chua-Tran, Chi Nguyen and Jenny Zhou) who hold social power purely due to their family connections.
The play isn’t a faithful retelling of Pung’s novel, but that’s not a problem. Here, Lucy is first introduced to us as a 38-year-old woman in the present, having realised her childhood ambition to become a schoolteacher. Through a bit of time travel trickery orchestrated by her friend Linh (Chua-Tran), who is introduced to the audience as a banana (both figuratively and literally), Lucy finds herself back at Laurinda. Memories are relived: she endures bullying from The Cabinet and subtle racism from steely headmistress Mrs Gray (Georgina Naidu) and her remedial English teacher Mrs Leslie (Choi, who pulls off multiple roles with flair). The chasm widens between Lucy’s life at school and home, as she navigates the expectations of her parents (Roy Phung and Chi Nguyen in notable performances as Ba and Má) alongside the cloistered world of Laurinda.
It’s clear we’re back in the 90s: less than a third into the play, we hear snippets of a Backstreet Boys song and Pauline Hanson’s infamous “we are swamped by Asians” speech. There are references to John Marsden and Daniel Johns. But there’s little in the way of set design: minor props (an ornate desk, a grand piano, a hospital bed, a toilet) are pushed in and out, but otherwise the set is remarkably sparse.
A better-directed play might have been able to propel the show through imagination alone; in this uneven production, such sparseness only detracts from the experience. A large projected background fills in the gaps as we see Lucy at the school library, or when she reflects on her internal turmoil during an unconvincing soliloquy.
As culture diversifies in the western world, creating opportunities for those long minoritised in the arts to tell their stories, Laurinda is remarkably timely. It arrives amid a surge in anti-Asian racism during the pandemic and renewed discussions about the place of private schools in Australia – hotbeds of nepotism and corruption among the elite. All of this makes Laurinda ripe for adaptation. And, hearing untranslated Vietnamese (which recalls the untranslated Cantonese in Benjamin Law’s Torch the Place) on a main stage is exciting.
And yet by deliberately casting Asian actors in originally Anglo roles, a certain flattening occurs. While this can be interpreted as a well-intentioned nod towards representation, it comes across as naff, especially in a heated scene in which slurs are hurled between The Cabinet and Lucy. In the novel, Lucy’s sense of being ostracised by her white peers is visceral; here, having Asian actors taunt each other almost feels like it is being played for comedy, even shying away from showing the realities of racism. What’s wrong with showing oppression for what it is? Racism hasn’t gone away. White audience members cackle. Lucy’s anger, as she retaliates, feels like something more suited for the screen.
The treatment is uneven. It’s unclear what the play wants to be, as musical, dramatic and comedic elements pivot in a scattershot manner, never lingering on one for too long. The book is well-paced and written with nuance: readers are left to figure out the gaps, making the story that much more enriching for those who recognise Lucy’s experience and illuminating for those who don’t. Halfway into the play, when Mrs Leslie chides Lucy for misunderstanding what is required of her, she is told that “you see the things you are and you see them wrong”. Unfortunately, this turns out to apply to Laurinda as well.
The Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Laurinda is on at Southbank theatre The Sumner until 10 September
