State of family affairs makes for great theatre
A new production of Single Asian Female coincides with State Theatre Company’s 2023 season launch, with a focus on family.
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Fiona Choi could be forgiven for feeling as if she has become a permanent part of the hilariously dysfunctional, but highly talented, Law family.
Having starred for three seasons as tiger mum Jenny Law in the international hit SBS sitcom The Family Law – based on the memoir by son Benjamin Law – Australian-born Chinese actor and singer Choi is now stepping in to lead the cast of stage play Single Asian Female, written by Benjamin’s sister Michelle Law.
“I absolutely do feel part of the Law family,” Choi laughs.
“We’ve been very much in touch with Michelle … I can feel the little Easter eggs in all the writing, like I know when it is part of Jenny’s story.
“I understand where Michelle’s references are coming from when she is writing these colourful little speeches for my character, which is Pearl.”
State Theatre Company’s new production of Single Asian Female finally arrives to coincide with this year’s OzAsia Festival, having originally been scheduled as part of the 2020 season which became a casualty of the Covid pandemic.
“I’m all for representation … to have this tie-in (with OzAsia) to celebrate the whole identity that this play is all about, which is to be Asian and Australian,” Choi says.
“This play is essentially a beautiful love story to mothers and daughters, and family. It’s so universal, this story of having parents that move countries and then are bringing up their children in a whole other culture.
“What is this new identity? How much should you be hanging on to your old culture, and is it possible to embrace both cultures – the old and the new – and for it to form a whole new identity which is greater than the sum of its parts?”
There’s also a more personal link behind Choi’s passion for both roles.
“The reason why I have such a connection to the character of Jenny Law – the same as Pearl Wong – is because it is essentially the story of my own mother as well, and all the aunties that I grew up with.
“The other actors that play my daughters, Elvy-Lee (Quici) and Juanita (Navas-Nguyen), they absolutely hear their own mums’ voice saying these things as well.”
Single Asian Female is set 20 years later than The Family Law.
“It’s much more the generation of my own mother,” says Choi, who brought her own show Dragon Lady to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2019. “Pearl is a restaurateur who followed her husband and settled in Australia and opened a restaurant.
“That’s exactly what happened to my mum … this whole feeling of never really knowing who you are as your own person.
“Pearl was 20 … I think my mum was around 21 or 22, had only known my father for a few months but – with a view to having a better life, better opportunity in a western world and escaping poverty in Hong Kong – was willing to uproot her whole life and be a pioneer, to follow her husband’s dream.
“I lost my dad seven years ago … I saw my own mother go through this whole journey of really unpacking for the first time who she was as a person – not tied up to her husband’s wants or needs, or having to be responsible for the restaurant or to raise the children.”
As well as social attitudes towards race and gender, the play examines generational and cultural change.
“There’s a teenager, a woman in her
mid-to-late 20s and a woman who is 50. How do these three generations deal with the attitudes of Aussies?”
Set and costume designer Ailsa Paterson has created a two-storey stage layout for Single Asian Female, encompassing a Chinese restaurant, living room and karaoke bar – in which, yes, the cast does sing.
Before returning to Australia in 2015 to star in The Family Law, Choi spent 12 years in New York, appearing in such shows as Homeland, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Person Of Interest, Unforgettable and The Newsroom. She finds there has been a quantum shift in the roles available for Asian actors, as well as other people of colour, away from racist stereotypes or cliches such as the “smart Asian doctor”.
“The difference is who writes it – who is the voice of the story? Therein lies the authenticity.
“They are writing from what they know, and there is a truthfulness about it.
“On the surface, Pearl Wong and Jenny Law may seem like that trope, with that accent and the inappropriate behaviour and being overly bossy and highly formidable.
“But, it’s really true to life – in fact, they are the most three-dimensional, authentic characters that I’ve been lucky enough to play in recent years.”
Single Asian Female also coincides with the launch of State Theatre Company’s 2023 season, and artistic director Mitchell Butel says its growing audience continues to become “wider and more diverse on many levels”.
“Our shows will explore many different and incredible worlds, voices and stories but at the heart of the season we’re exploring the notion of family,” Butel says.
“Audiences will see families beginning, expanding, falling apart, hoping to heal and new families being formed beyond the biological – families and communities formed by experience, by resilience, by love, by language and by music.”
The season opens in February with Edward Albee’s controversial, Tony-award winning The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, which marks Claudia Karvan’s return to the theatre after 25 years, opposite fellow film and TV star Don Hany. Four years ago Karvan told Butel that The Goat, which depicts a marriage crumbling after the husband reveals he has fallen in love with the title animal, was the only play that would draw her back on stage.
“I love that play,” Karvan says. “It blew my mind all over again when I re-read it. Edward Albee is gay, and the play was written during the whole debate about same-sex marriage. The absurd exercise he is doing in this play is testing the limits of our acceptance and our tolerance, particularly within intimate relationships. It still really presses some buttons.”
Torres Strait Islander actor Jimi Bani, who starred earlier this year in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, will return as part of a double bill in late April-May with a comedy about depression, Every Brilliant Thing – first performed here at the 2018 Adelaide Festival.
Completing the double-bill, Caroline Craig of Blue Heelers and Underbelly fame will play a barrister who defends men charged with sexual assault in Prima Facie, by Suzie Miller.
At What Cost, by Nathan Maynard, comes fresh in June from its premiere at Sydney’s Belvoir St and tells of a family and a Tasmanian community in crisis when a Palawa man has the bones of his ancestor returned to him.
In August, Jamaican-born Zahra Newman will star as jazz singer Billie Holiday in the musical play Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, performing with a live band on stage.
“I actually saw it in 2014 in New York – the Broadway production – and I really wanted to do it, but I was also incredibly terrified by the prospect of trying to portray such an iconic figure,” Newman says.
Adapted by Verity Laughton from the novel by SA author Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words is a collaboration with Sydney Theatre Company and will open in September, followed in November by another world premiere, Welcome To Your New Life, Adelaide pianist and writer Anna Goldsworthy’s memoir on parenthood.
State Theatre is also bringing back its previous sold-out shows Girls & Boys, starring Justine Clarke, and Euphoria for encore performances in August.
“We’re pumped to bring all these incredible shows to life and bring back some of our sold-out hits to satisfy those who couldn’t squeeze into their initial seasons,” Butel says. ■
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