Untitled F - ck M -ss S -- gon Play

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Sat 24 Jun 2023 - Sat 22 Jul 2023

Untitled F - ck M -ss S -- gon Play

I saw Miss Saigon about 25 years ago and to be honest can’t remember much about it, apart from the famous helicopter scene. The long-running musical, set in 1970’s Vietnam and inspired by Puccini's 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, had a much more visceral effect on Kimber Lee. She went home and started writing a script which would eventually win the Royal Exchange's Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2019. It is having its premier at the theatre, and is part of Manchester International Festival (MIF2023).

Mei Mac (Kim) & Tom Weston-Jones (Clarke). Photo by The Other Richard - Richard Davenport.

The first part of the play was the most dynamic and enjoyable. It was a send-up of the hackneyed Butterfly persona, which was as sharp as a filleting-knife. Kimber Lee relished poking fun at the melodramatic victimhood of the story with its demure, doomed, deserted young woman - Dirt poor but very clean. .. great skin. - waiting for her saviour to return from America.

The energy and laughter carried you through so that the absence of an interval, in this near to two-hour drama, was not a problem.

Lourdes Faberes (Rosie) & Mei Mac (Kim). Photo by The Other Richard - Richard Davenport.

It was in the second half of the evening that I found my engagement slipping. The setting changed to a contemporary New York apartment, but it was not clear if we were still in the same vein of parody or if this was meant to be a free-standing drama in its own right. The script had spent so long having fun with its source material that there had not been enough space for character development for us to feel fully invested in what was going on.

The monologue delivered by Cio Cio (Lourdes Faberes), Kim’s mother, despite its eloquence, seemed to be too much in the author’s voice and too much of an academic cultural critique or opinion piece, rather than a three-dimensional, autonomous character speaking from her heart.

That said Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play , directed by Roy Alexander Weise, was a stimulating and enlivening and original night at the theatre. The audience gave the actors a rapturous round of applause and cheering at the end.

Mei Mac was particularly impressive in the way she switched from the coyly fluttering Kim of the first half to the straight-talking modern young woman flexing her wings in the closing scenes.

Mei Mac (Kim). Photo by The Other Richard - Richard Davenport.

Untitled F * ck M * ss S * * gon Play by Kimber Lee is at Royal Exchange, Manchester until 22 July, as part of the International Festival (MIF23) . It is at London's Young Vic theatre 18 September - 4 November 2023.



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220584 - 2023-06-25 12:20:27