Nathan Joe’s newest play, Losing Face, efficiently blends parts of sci-fi and vacation motion pictures right into a forceful and charming research of the human coronary heart. The undertaking was initially developed underneath the title Flesh off the Boat as a part of Playmarket’s Asian Ink Clinic in 2013 and the revisiting proves rewarding.
We meet Mark (Andrew Ford) on Christmas Eve as he anxiously tries to make his condo cosy and festive. He is ready on a textual content from his daughter Jennifer (Shervonne Grierson) to let him know her airplane has landed, and his accomplice Shawn (Danny Lam) is getting dressed within the bed room following some final minute tough and tumble (a staging of homosexual lust and affection which is joyfully obtained by the opening evening viewers). Then a knock on the door – Jennifer has caught an Uber and Mark is caught attempting to navigate a 12 months of estrangement and clarify a 12 months of latest life decisions. Swiftly the dialog devolves into emotionally fraught territory and a reset happens. Mark and Jennifer are then given the possibility to begin once more, and once more, and once more.
The director’s notice from Sam Phillips acknowledges drawing on each theatrical and filmic lineages (proposed addition to the title Losing Face: Groundhog Gay) and whereas these influences, current within the time looping construction of the play and a ‘chamber film’ staging, lend the piece a very comedic bent, Losing Face stretches far past the trite or trope-y.
Bubbles of grief, anger, and betrayal burst and reform. It is revealed that Jennifer and Shawn have rather a lot in frequent, maybe an excessive amount of in frequent for consolation, each being Chinese and of their early twenties. The fluctuating tensions between household ties, tradition, and id buoy the script alongside. Each permutation presents a brand new alternative to needle into the fractured father-daughter relationship, to query Mark’s selection to depart his household, to discover the imbalances in Mark and Shawn’s relationship. Many repetitions are performed to laughs, exploring all too acquainted expressions of frustration or misunderstanding, others to gasps from the viewers as what is alleged expresses offensive, hurtful, or (in Pākehā Mark’s case) racist sentiments.
Under the pen of one other playwright the resets might need develop into little greater than a frivolous conceit into which the central scenario was shoehorned; nonetheless, right here every new reset turns into akin to the turning of a kaleidoscope. Both delicate and substantial adjustments to the unfolding script produce shimmering new visions. Nathan Joe’s script is just not restricted to producing one studying of the characters. Mark is obtainable extra complexity than a single linear narrative would possibly, and Ford delivers some searing monologues in consequence. Jennifer is given the house to alternate between grieving the daddy she knew, celebrating his sexuality, and being enraged on behalf of her mom; Grierson delivers all with a wholesome dose of youthful hearth. Shawn is obtainable glimpses of the long run, and moments of tenderness, and it’s finally Shawn who most clearly expresses the anguish of being lowered to 1 side of your self moderately than being liked for the multiplicity you include.
Amidst such excessive emotional stakes, Phillips finds moments of calmness and of heightened surrealism, permitting the forged to sink into them moderately than treating them as purely comedic aid or brushing over the comparatively mundane. Supporting these moments and additional fueling the sci-fi nature of the piece, Jennifer Lal’s lighting design and Shan Yu’s 翁俞珊 set design produce some strikingly cinematic photographs of doubling – Jennifer multiplies, Jennifer and Shawn develop into twins, the condo turns into a collection of mirrored halls. The system does start to lose momentum within the final third of the play and maybe some tightening can happen right here, however then a temporal leap produces an alternate timeline and new fears and alternatives for therapeutic are introduced.
In the programme Losing Face is likened to the latest runaway success Everything Everywhere All at Once, and it is a truthful comparability. Losing Face grapples with the the whole lot bagel that’s the human coronary heart and succeeds. It could be very Christmassy, very homosexual, and really a lot about household – equal elements joyous, scary, loving, and exposing.
Losing Face is a good New Zealand play.
Losing Face performs Q Theatre 9th-19th of August as a part of Matchbox 2023
