Rice

Michele Lee writes plays only about women of colour.  And that’s just fine: there’s enough already about the white blokes.  Rice is about an ambitious, self-obsessed executive working for Australia’s largest rice producer, the granddaughter of a West Bengal immigrant, and a Chinese cleaner with heaps of her own business and family problems.

Kristy Best and Hsiao-Ling Tang play Nisha and Yvette with great truth and spirit, as well as the smaller roles of their colleagues and family.  Their growing accord, if not friendship, every night when Nisha works back, is the heart of the play, but background themes cover no less than globalisation, fair food distribution, gender battles and the collapse of good grace and respect.

But without hammering them, Lee’s snappy dialogue dances through all this with wit and considerable tenderness.  Risking an often direct delivery to the audience, Lee Lewis keeps the women connected even as they leap into other characters – Yvette’s rebellious daughter and bogan nephew, Nisha’s indifferent boyfriend, impossible CEO and lame colleague in marketing. 

It’s an effective simple set by Renee Mulder with transitions nicely punctuated by Jason Glenwright’s lighting and modest AV and musical interludes from Wil Hughes.

While the play early threatens to ramble, Lee quickens her plot with Nisha’s fatal overseas business trip to sell rice to the Indians, and the ending is both moving and unsentimental.  Indeed, these women are no heroes, but Yvette particularly is a welcome new Chinese character on the Australian stage, and Tang also does a fine spin playing a dreadfully stylish Indian ministerial adviser.

Martin Portus