An outrageously funny new play about sex, literature and spiralling out of control, Michele Lee makes her Malthouse Theatre debut with the word premiere of Going Down in the Beckett Theatre from 11 May 2018.
Natalie Yang has the world at her feet. Her debut novel Banana Girl has finally hit the shelves. Her sex life is an endless smorgasbord and her posse laud her as the voice of her generation. Life just couldn’t be better.
But the success of her rival – an Indonesian political refugee and multi-award-winning peddler of cliched migrant stories – is about to send Natalie’s career and her confidence spiralling out of control. And when that bubble bursts, the come-down is very real.
Natalie’s life flips into a tailspin as her job, her career, and her relationships are thrown into disarray. But that’s nothing a little booze, caffeine, and a few overpriced hipster lemonades can’t fix.
Melbourne’s answer to Lena Dunham’s Girls. In this world, the girls aren’t privileged white kids, and they’re not successful. Lee delivers a sexy, brutally frank and funny examination of flawed characters failing at life in the most outrageous ways possible.
“It’s about success and ambition, it’s about being Asian and Australian, it’s about family, it’s a love song to Melbourne, it’s sort of a riff on Girls meets Sex and the City – it should sing with the messy hybrid feelings that make me, me.” explains Lee.
Leticia Cáceres directs this fast-paced and side-splitting comedy featuring a stellar cast of rising stars including Paul Blenheim, Catherine Davies, Josh Price, Naomi Rukavina and Jenny Wu.
Michele Lee is a Hmong-Australian playwright with a razor-sharp eye for the contradictions of multiculturalism and the interplay between sexuality, identity, displacement and desire in contemporary culture. At 29 she wrote her debut novel, Banana Girl – an irreverent and poignant memoir about living in an online world, Gen Y yearnings and the pressures of being a young artist.
Lee is the recipient of the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award 2016-2017 for Rice, the 2015 Malcolm Robertson Prize for Going Down, and the 2013 Australian Writers’ Guild Award for her radio play See How the Leaf People Run. Her play, Moths was the inaugural recipient of the Betty Burstall Commission. Lee’s memoir, Banana Girl was published by Transit Lounge in 2013.
Director: Leticia Cáceres Featuring: Paul Blenheim, Catherine Davies, Josh Price, Naomi Rukavina, Jenny Wu Designer: The Sisters Hayes Lighting Designer: Sian James-Holland Composer & Sound Designer: THE SWEATS Dramaturgy: Mark Pritchard Design Associate: Matilda Woodroofe Stage Manager: Lyndie Li Wan Po
Going Down
Beckett Theatre – The Coopers malthouse, 113 Sturt Street, Southbank
Season: 11 May – 3 June 2018
Information and Bookings: www.malthousetheatre.com.au
Image: Catherine Davies – photo by Zan Wimberley