REVIEW: How to Be A Great White Man, or, An Autobiography
(Proudly Asian Theatre)
by John Whatley
[Sound and Fury]
For Fans Of: Uther Dean, Nisha Madhan, Fractious Tash.
“I feel like I’m having a stroke,”
I hear my partner whisper to me, about ten minutes into Natasha Lay’s How To Be A Great White Man, Or, An Autobiography, directed by Chye-Ling Huang. This is a sentence I’ve heard exactly once before from them, in reference to the film Being John Malkovich. A film, which very coincidentally, is referenced seconds after the words left their mouth.
Proudly Asian Theatre’s new offering, as promised in the title, is an autobiography. It is “a surreal romp through issues of identity,” according to the poster. It is “a memory play about the human desire to belong,” if the programme is to be believed. How To Be manages to be all three and more, for better or worse.
It goes something like this: Tash, a twenty (or twenty-one? Twenty-five?) year-old woman, finds herself being interrogated (or is it interviewed?) for something she’s written called How to Be A Great White Man. Tash has no recollection of this – nothing about the document, nothing about writing it, and nothing beyond waking up in the interrogation room. These interrogation scenes are alternated with surreal vignettes of Tash’s memories, past and future, real and imagined.
An ensemble cast of six (Zak Enayat, Ravikanth Gurunathan, Marianne Infante, Amanda Grace Leo, Mustaq Missouri, Rashmi Pilapitiya) carry the show on their backs (which also carries the cast on their backs, which is also carrying a show on their backs—you get the point). It is worth nothing that the casting is not only colour-blind—the play has been written with the express intention that characters of a certain ethnicity, age or gender need not be played by an actor of the same demographic. Every single character, including Tash and the Interrogator, is shared between all six actors, divided scene by scene.
What’s the result? The universe of How To Be exists somewhere parallel to our own – everything is familiar, but not quite what it should be. A parallel universe brought to life not only by its adept cast, but also the deceptively minimalist set designed by Micheal McCabe and a lingering, haunting soundscape by Emi Pogoni. Adults (Zak Enayat, Marianne Infante) play five-year-old schoolgirls, complete with undersized school desks and chairs. The same actor (Mustaq Missouri) plays five-year-old Tash, her own father and a particularly creepy version of the Interrogator. A particularly striking image from the play was that of actor Ravikanth Gurunathan walking onstage in an oversized coat and a ginger-haired wig, with a walking stick, presented without an explanation. This is, of course, Tash playing dress-up as the figure in the painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich. Naturally!
Was it jarring? Yes. Distracting? Sometimes. Memorable? Definitely. The ensemble move between characters so seamlessly and share roles with an effortless ease, it quickly becomes second nature for the audience as well as the performers. For fear of spoiling too much, this sharing of roles and blind casting also eventually proves to be more than an equal-opportunities gimmick.
Unfortunately, where the production delivers in performance, the play itself fails to deliver a cohesive, satisfying tale. How To Be is more confused than confusing, and would benefit from futher revision. In its current stage, it reads more like development season material than a mainbill production from one of Tāmaki Makaurau’s most exciting independent theatre companies. The play attempts to deliver one too many messages and focuses too much on exploring themes instead of characters. This is not to say that the writing completely falls flat – the play is full of punchy quips and clever wise-cracks as well as more tender, heartfelt moments. However, the narrative feels contrived and the play seems more interested in the situational opportunities offered by the premise than in delivering any sort of real story.
My partner and I left the theatre feeling both elated and relieved – they felt more of the former and I felt more of the latter. Interestingly enough, when I asked them on the car ride home to name a moment in the play that left them breathless, they couldn’t name a single one. They’d already forgotten about the Malkovich moment, even though I haven’t.
How To Be A Great White Man, or, An Autobiography is an ambitious grasp by new playwright Natasha Lay. Lay has shown that she can deliver sound and fury, but whether she can make it clearly signify anything remains to be seen. Despite its flaws, Lay’s voice shines through, and the ensemble’s performance may be worth the price of admission alone.