Gre*t title, shame about the pl*y. New Yorker Kimber Lee’s satire is an angry shout against the racist and sexist portrayal of Asians in Madama Butterfly, South Pacific, Miss Saigon and beyond. It won the UK’s Bruntwood Prize for playwriting and Roy Alexander Weise’s energetic co-production received warm reviews on its Manchester premiere. But despite the verve of his staging and a compelling central performance from Mei Mac it’s a gruelling watch, hitting us repeatedly over the head with the central issue in the most obvious way.
It begins with brisk recaps of Puccini’s opera and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, then a speeded-up medley of other fictions, sardonically described by Rochelle Rose’s narrator and cartoonishly acted by the cast. The stories are blurred and homogenised to illustrate recurring clichés: an Asian heroine is submissive but “a natural at the exotic sexy-sexy stuff”; she surrenders to the lure of the west, romantically and economically; and she sacrifices herself while her child is taken away for a “better life” in America.
