Going Down review: Sex diary delivers fresh take on 'migrant porn'
THEATRE
GOING DOWN ★★★★
Michele Lee, Malthouse Theatre, until June 3
Michele Lee’s Going Down twists irreverent sex comedy and sardonic literary satire into a warts-and-all take-down of what her protagonist calls “migrant porn”.
Natalie Yang (Catherine Davies) is a young Australian author with Hmong heritage – her mother nearly drowned escaping to Thailand during the Secret War in Laos, though Natalie has no interest in exploiting that trauma or pandering to any of the more marketable portrayals of “the migrant experience”.
No - She’s written Banana Girl, which she imagines is an envelope-pushing erotic memoir. It was a modest success, but now she’s being overshadowed by her bete-noir, Lu Lu Jayadi (Jenny Wu) – a rival who’s become a literary darling (and best-selling author) by cleaving to the poignant and inspiring tropes – not to mention the shameless exoticism – that the Australian public expects from migrant stories.
Natalie fumes about Lu Lu so much she alienates her best friends (Paul Blenheim and Naomi Rukavina). Yet when Natalie meets her nemesis at the Wheeler Centre, Lu Lu requites her rudeness with admiration and amity.
Lee’s wickedly witty comic romp really stirs the melting pot
Is the solution to beat Lu Lu, or join her? Natalie hedges her bets: immersing herself in research with a range of men (Josh Price) for her sex-positive second book One Hundred Cocks in a Hundred Nights, while reaching out to her mother, with plans to sell out and capitalise on a heroic tale of survival.
Lee’s wickedly witty comic romp really stirs the melting pot, and Leticia Caceres has the cast bring it to life with infectious glee.
Davies centres the production as a young author on a downward spiral. She veers between righteousness, decadence and vicious envy, and is never afraid to embrace the ridiculous – there’s one hilarious moment where, as a kind of up-yours to orientalism, she deflates a tiger balloon between her thighs – though she’s always credible and finds a touching vulnerability underneath all the spiky armour.
Wu makes an infuriatingly calm and self-possessed foil for her, while the other actors perform multiple roles, including some strikingly silly cameos.
It’s rare to see such a nimble, fresh comic vision from a new Australian playwright, and this production does it justice.