Lily (Stephanie Jack) is 26 and about to move to London from Sydney when her grandmother, Adeline (Gabrielle Chan), a former beauty queen, passes away. Her dying wish is for Lily to honour her legacy by winning Miss Peony, the community beauty pageant held at the local casino.
Except Lily’s poh poh (grandma) isn’t going anywhere – she hangs around in spectral form through a charmed jade bracelet, watching her granddaughter’s every move. And Lily isn’t your typical good Chinese girl – she’s tattooed, single, works at a bar and didn’t go to uni.
Michelle Law’s latest play explores a raft of issues: filial piety, cultural identity, lateral violence, misogyny, friendship and authenticity. Like Law’s previous works, Single Asian Female and Top Coat, humour is the driving force; her writing is funny and sharp, but there’s heart and heft beneath the laughs.
Other than her grandmother, who Chan plays with old-world grace and the requisite terror when needed, Lily’s foils are her pageant rivals who become her friends. There’s Marcy (Deborah Faye Lee), a prim and proper sort who’s constantly promoting her family’s business; Joy (Shirong Wu), a loopy, Minions backpack-wearing gender studies academic from Taipei who hopes to find love through participating in the pageant; and Sabrina (a show-stealing Mabel Li), the embodiment of the EDM-loving Asian Baby Girl from western Sydney.
These characters inhabit stereotypes of Asian women, but through the course of the play, their depths and individual lives are revealed through often surprising turns. Liu – a relative newcomer to the stage, having made his acting debut in the Malthouse’s 2022 production K-BOX – rounds out the all-Asian cast as pageant producer Zhen Hua, who also challenges Lily’s preconceptions. He and Lee also briefly play a judgmental uncle and auntie, to roars of laughter; Liu gets the chance to show off his impressive singing chops.
These characters toy with cliches, and some of the play’s funniest moments hinge on these send-ups – one of its best scenes involves the age-old Asian fight about who pays the bill that will send a shudder of recognition up the spine of anyone who’s watched that very argument play out in real life.
Miss Peony is a cultural love letter in many ways: a poem by romantic Chinese poet Li Bai is a central thematic point, and the play is trilingual, with surtitles in English, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, and characters speaking English, Cantonese and Mandarin. It’s a wonderfully inclusive way to present and experience theatre, but screen lags mean some emotional punches are literally lost in translation; conversely, jokes are sometimes spoiled as they can be read before they’re performed.
Under Courtney Stewart’s direction, the play unfolds like an on-screen comedy, with a montage-like scene where Lily tries on clothes as they fall from the ceiling and the actors embodying different characters as they parade out as the 12 finalists in the pageant. Kristina Chan’s choreography brings the performance elements to life in a fun and authentic way. The set and costuming, designed by Jonathan Hindmarsh, endearingly captures the tricky middle ground between glamour and garishness; the stage transforms seamlessly from a bead curtained living room to a decked-out casino.
Pageants are a great vehicle to tackle big topics within an ethnic community. It’s been done before – Sydney playwright James Elazzi gave a Lebanese spin in 2021’s Queen Fatima – and Law mostly does it well, teasing out the archaic aspects of the tradition and how they rub against more modern mindsets, particularly in the west. The inclusive elements feel natural – a queer storyline is handled beautifully – but some points feel shoehorned, like a subplot about sexual harassment at the hands of a powerful man – an important issue introduced so suddenly that it feels jarring.
Still, there’s a lot to like in this charming production, full of verve and warmth. Corny as it sounds, Miss Peony is ultimately about acceptance – of oneself, of others, of all the ugly and beautiful parts that make up a community. The relationship between grandmother and granddaughter is its beating heart – in death a new understanding is finally reached, setting them both free.
