4/4/4 was created by Zhen Yu Yao and Kangdeng Zhao. The review below was written about its run at 2023’s EdFringe. The Fringe cast consists of (in order of appearance): Tsui-Chu Wang, Alyssa Naka Silver, Amanda Ng and Ting Ting Wang.
4/4/4: 4 Real Asians, 4 White Men, 4 Fake Asians **** theSpace @ Niddry St (Venue 9) until 19 August
This is what happens when cultural appropriation goes meta. As the title summarises, four actors described as 'Asian' play four white men who play four 'fake Asians': people who have created alternative versions of themselves to appeal to a world where Asian stereotypes are fetishised for being interesting, cool or exotic. To add to the confusion, the performers keep slipping in and out of character. Trying to keep track, as well as work out what it's all about, is a mind melting but thought provoking experience in a show that ultimately asks it will ever be possible to live in the 'post-racial world' of a new 'woke' TV sitcom that tries, and fails, to contain the action.
A Brechtian dissection of California rolls, cultural tropes and theatre itself, both the show and its characters are constantly in metamorphosis, as the growing pile of assumptions and behaviours deemed incorrect starts to stifle the conversation and drive the group apart in a piece that joyfully takes aim at itself, as well as others elsewhere. Are we on the side of creative freedom or cultural appropriation? Is it better to try and change things from within or fight them from outside? Are impossible-to-resolve conversations driven by oppositions part of the problem rather than the solution?
Using comedy like a precision tool, rather than feeling the need to be endlessly funny, the piece concludes in the kind of chaos that these conversations often do - but also a glorious freeform dance routine to Freddy Mercury's The Great Pretender. After all, "aren't we all fakes?" we are asked. While the conclusion seems to be to not to get stuck in paradoxes that perhaps aren't really the point, its exuberance also demonstrates what it might be like not to have to - a simplistic but appealing vision where everyone is happy.
by Sally Stott
Published on The Scotsman (bit.ly/3KQrnK5)
