Tag Archives: Hyemi Shin

Rice

Rice

★★★★

Orange Tree Theatre

Rice

Rice

Orange Tree Theatre

Reviewed – 13th October 2021

★★★★

 

“Michele Lee has created great characters and a compelling story”

 

Rice is Michele Lee’s enterprising two hander about women of colour trapped in the heirarchical (and blinkered) world of male dominated business in Australia. It has just opened at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. It’s a co-production between the Orange Tree and the Actors Touring Company, directed by Matthew Xia. Despite the best efforts of all concerned, Rice is a play with a brilliant premise that doesn’t quite meet its promise.

Lee, who is Hmong-Australian, wanted to create a play that gave two actresses of colour a chance to play multiple roles—roles of “versatility and virtuosity and range.” In creating Nisha, (played by Zainab Hasan) an ambitious young executive hoping to rise in the Golden Fields rice company of Melbourne, and pitting her against the older Yvette (Sarah Lam), a cleaner of Chinese ancestry at the same company, Lee creates a situation fraught with cross cultural tensions both within and without these women’s lives. Hasan does not only play Nisha, an Australian of West Bengali ancestry, but shifts into a variety of roles, including Sheree, Yvette’s troubled daughter, and the white (and very privileged) son of David Egan—a man who is threatening her daughter with a prison sentence. Lam takes on an equally dazzling range of roles, including Tom Budd, an executive at Nisha’s company with whom Nisha has a brief and ill-judged affair; Graeme Hartley, a management “guru”, and Gretel Patel—who brings Nisha’s dreams of advancement to a crashing fall during a disastrous business trip to India.

The story of Rice is quite simple: Nisha and Yvette meet in Nisha’s office where she has been working long hours. Nisha is unhappy with Yvette’s refusal to clean her workspace to her liking. Yvette has very definite ideas about what she should be cleaning. But this clash between powerful personalities is about to become irrelevant in company politics—the Golden Fields company has just hired a management “guru” who is slashing and burning every budget he can find. Thrown together in mutual misery in a series of after business hours encounters, the women become friends. They bond over food, naturally—both Yvette’s home cooked Chinese dishes, and Nisha’s concern over her happy go lucky boyfriend’s food truck and his “khaki rolls.”

Two actresses, no matter how experienced or talented—as Lam and Hasan are—cannot quite pull off the range of roles in Rice, although dialect coach Catherine Weate has done sterling work with all the accents. It’s hard for the audience to keep track of all the characters that cross this bright, white stage in ninety five minutes of playing time. It’s to Lee’s credit that she has created such interesting and varied roles—it would be great to see a cast playing each role with a single actor. Similarly, the change of scenes in Rice would benefit from changes of scenery. Changing the lighting (again, even in the talented hands of Bethany Gupwell, the lighting designer) doesn’t quite do it.

A play with such a varied cast and complex settings (the scenes shift from Melbourne, Australia to Delhi, India) is a lot to pull off successfully in a small theatre in the round. The intimacy of the Orange Tree stage should work well in a two hander, but in this case, the set design is unnecessarily cluttered with a desk. This makes playing in the round quite tricky—every time someone sits down at that desk, the space is transformed from four into three sides, and the audience seated on the fourth side behind the desk have to grapple with the backs (or, at best, the profiles) of the performers. This happens too often not to be an unwelcome distraction. But the overwhelming feeling that remains after the conclusion of this production of Rice—is that this might not be a piece for the theatre. Perhaps the story would show to best advantage as an Australian indie film—the kind that has made Australian film making famous.

In Rice, Michele Lee has created great characters and a compelling story. But it needs the right environment to show to best advantage. Put together a bigger cast in the right medium—and this could be a classic.

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Helen Murray

 

Rice

Orange Tree Theatre until 13th November

 

Five star reviews this year:
Bad Days And Odd Nights | ★★★★★ | Greenwich Theatre | June 2021
Bklyn The Musical | ★★★★★ | Online | March 2021
Breakin’ Convention 2021 | ★★★★★ | Sadler’s Wells Theatre | July 2021
Cinderella | ★★★★★ | Gillian Lynne Theatre | August 2021
Cruise | ★★★★★ | Duchess Theatre | May 2021
Overflow | ★★★★★ | Sadler’s Wells Theatre | May 2021
Operation Mincemeat | ★★★★★ | Southwark Playhouse | August 2021
Preludes in Concert | ★★★★★ | Online | May 2021
Rainer | ★★★★★ | Arcola Theatre | October 2021
Reunion | ★★★★★ | Sadler’s Wells Theatre | May 2021
In My Own Footsteps | ★★★★★ | Book Review | June 2021
Sh!t-Faced Macbeth | ★★★★★ | Leicester Square Theatre | July 2021
Shook | ★★★★★ | Online | February 2021
The Hooley | ★★★★★ | Chiswick House & Gardens | June 2021
Starting Here, Starting Now | ★★★★★ | Waterloo East Theatre | July 2021
Witness For The Prosecution | ★★★★★ | London County Hall | September 2021
Roots | ★★★★★ | Wilton’s Music Hall | October 2021

 

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Mám  

★★★★

Sadler’s Well Theatre

Mám

Mám

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Reviewed – 5th February 2020

★★★★

 

“a piece that carries a buoyant energy”

 

The curtain goes up to reveal a young girl in a white dress and a man wearing the mask of a bull playing the accordion. It’s an ominous picture – one that hints at an extensive genre back catalogue of folk horror and pagan-inspired historical stories. But that is not what MÁM is. When the audience has taken their seats and the lights have dropped, the bull mask is removed and the girl takes out a packet of Tayto crisps and munches on them lavishly. This – folk that are rooted in real and everyday people and experiences – is the true heart of Michael Keegan-Dolan’s wild and whirling dance show.

Along with his company Teaċ Daṁsa, Keegan-Dolan has created a piece that carries a buoyant energy. The dancers soar and fall as one breath. Their spirit is infectious, and indeed it is through the medium of infection that the performers often interact with each, causing one another to fall, laugh, or swoon with a beautiful interconnectedness. From moving fluid solos to high-tempo group stomping and twirling, the choreography showcases a range of the performers’ talents, but also allows pockets of stillness for the audience to take in the music.

The music is another thematic success and draws on multiple inspirations. Concertina player Cormac Begley begins the show on his own with some initial lilting melodies, but he is soon joined by Berlin-based collection s t a r g a z e who add more depth and liveliness. Amidst the many refrains they perform are some recognisable folk songs, but they also use their instruments at some points to create more abrupt and stuttering sounds – emblematic of harsh lives and rugged landscapes. The music is best overall when quick and lively, where the dancers form smooth lines and embody a wonderful leaping vitality.

Black and white is the palette of choice for the costumes (Hyemi Shin), but it is not a harsh black, more a faded workaday black that works to make the simple suits and dresses timeless yet also reminiscent of a stripped-back, more rustic era. The lighting (Adam Silverman) largely bathes the scenes in warmth to bring this out, but dips and dims to match when the mood changes.

Inspired by the history and landscapes of Corca Dhuibhne in Ireland, MÁM enacts a vivid retelling of universal themes – war, romance, sickness, and friendship. Although there are some serious mournful sequences, there are also several moments likely to tug up the corners of your mouth (and let me additionally hint that the opening is not the only appearance of Tayto crisps). The set (Sabine Dargent) works cleverly to peel away layers throughout the show, until all is exposed at the end. And the way the movements of the dancers and the band intertwine towards the end mirrors this. As the work progresses, shoes, ties, and jackets are all abandoned to leave the dancers barefoot and free to show what the work wants to enact – a raw, deep-rooted exploration of the emotive history of a place.

 

Reviewed by Vicky Richards

Photography by Ros Kavanagh

 


Mám

Sadler’s Wells Theatre until 7th February

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
The Thread | ★★½ | March 2019
Mitten Wir Im Leben Sind/Bach6Cellosuiten | ★★★★★ | April 2019
Rite Of Spring | ★★★★★ | May 2019
Constellations | ★★ | June 2019
Elixir Extracts Festival: Company Of Elders | ★★★★★ | June 2019
Fairy Tales | ★★★★ | June 2019
1mm Au Dessus Du Sol | ★★★★ | September 2019
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre – Programme A | ★★★★ | September 2019
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre – Programme C | ★★★★ | September 2019
Pure Dance | ★★★★ | October 2019

 

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