Tright here’s a sight gag in Prime Coat, Michelle Regulation’s new play, the place a personality raises a broadsheet conspicuously in the direction of us. “FREAKY FRIDAY 3 FLOPS,” the headline reads, above a picture of the beloved Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis movie that has change into synonymous with the physique swap.
Since its launch in 2003, Freaky Friday – itself primarily based on an earlier movie, and earlier than that, a kids’s novel – has spawned numerous spin-offs and imitators. Amid the rabble, there are these which, miraculously, uncover new methods into the tried-and-tested format: latest horror-comedy Freaky, for instance, the place a teenage lady trades locations with a serial killer; or the acclaimed anime Your Title, which transfigures its narrative gimmick into a wide ranging story of misplaced love. Prime Coat doesn’t fairly attain these heights, nevertheless it nonetheless proves itself a worthy addition to the canon.
Farcical and frenetic, Regulation’s spin on the physique swap is one drawn on racial strains. Winnie (Kimie Tsukakoshi) is a hot-headed nail technician vulnerable to outbursts over a endless deluge of demeaning, disrespectful – and white – clientele. Kate (Amber McMahon) is certainly one of them: a high-flying TV exec on the absurdly named Multicultural Broadcasting Company, and one of many final individuals for whom the time period “girlboss” is a badge of honour relatively than a pejorative.
Their destiny is sealed as quickly as Kate barges into the salon, all however demanding that Winnie repair her damaged nail. Earlier than lengthy, they start sparring. “I want individuals revered my authority,” Kate whines. “I want I had authority,” Winnie fires again.
In fact, their desires come true in fantastical trend – each a homage to and a parody of the 2003 Freaky Friday’s switcheroo scene, which takes place in a Chinese language restaurant, full with devilishly grinning maître d’. Prime Coat satirises the Orientalism of this scene: a mystical fan is brandished, smoke spills from a funnel, and a fortunate cat’s eyes glow laser-red. Kate and Winnie alternate our bodies and now, as is anticipated on this style, every should study the methods of the opposite – how tough it should be of their sneakers, how a lot they arrive to understand their authentic selves.
Besides, wait: it’s solely actually arduous for one social gathering right here.
Whereas Kate struggles to buff nails and wash ft – a lot to the confusion of Winnie’s boss Asami (Arisa Yura) – her counterpart soars by enterprise conferences and tv units, by chance righting the wrongs of her predecessor with little greater than widespread sense. (Learn: a mind not but wormed by the precise quirks of a media profession.)
The place Kate has trampled over co-workers in her blinkered bid to go up a community which values range solely when it comes to greenback indicators – an angle all too acquainted to anybody with even a cursory relationship to the Australian media – Winnie swoops in like a industrial relations Mary Poppins to grant long-deserved alternatives to junior workers Yuko (additionally Yura) and Indigenous enterprise government Marcus (Matty Mills).
Prime Coat excels when it lets Regulation’s broader comedic strokes take centre stage. One standout scene performs like a romcom montage, with Winnie-as-Kate and Marcus’s new friendship blooming over a slew of shifting set items, set to a Lizzo needle drop which – whereas extremely naff – drew large whoops from the group on opening evening.
However there are occasions when the work struggles to reconcile its kitschier components – James Lew’s Pinterest-board units, every drenched in a single color from canary yellow to Barbie pink, or Michael Toisuita’s sound design, which regularly resembles the namelesselectrobeats of a Promoting Sundown reduce scene – with its earnest dissection of race politics.
Maybe it’s as a result of Prime Coat is talking to 2 very distinct audiences: the Winnies and the Kates. To the previous, it provides – very like Regulation’s debut stage present Single Asian Feminine – the fun of being seen so particularly. It brims with references to east Asian experiences: jokes about double eyelids and lactose intolerance, in addition to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it second the place McMahon someway masters the flat-heeled Asian squat.
For the latter, Prime Coat supplies a crash course in movie and TV illustration, which, it argues, wields energy past the display to have an effect on the fabric existences of individuals of color.
The issue is that to non-white viewers (or a minimum of to this one), its classes are so apparent as to verge on trite. A soliloquy that Marcus delivers on symbolic annihilation – the method by which minority teams are systematically excluded or stereotyped within the media – comes throughout as didactic relatively than empowering. When Yuko utters strains like “tales are a salve”, it appears like she’s delivering a cultural competency seminar as a substitute of embodying a personality.
To be truthful, it’s a seminar that the Kates of the viewers might in all probability use. If solely they may relinquish their energy as simply as Prime Coat’s finale suggests, too: with a slapstick tussle and a teary admission.
This text was amended on 6 July 2022. In an earlier model the actor Kimie Tsukakoshi was misidentified because the playwright Michelle Regulation in two picture captions.
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