Genuine and Stable – Herald Theatre, 9-13 Dec (13th Floor Theatre Review)
Genuine and Stable is a sympathetic look at a shitty situation: an immigrant judged not by her peers, but by strangers—and on the basis of a private relationship which is nobody’s business but their own, but which must be recorded and questioned.
It’s such a routine task in every relationship-visa application that we take it for granted, forgetting its inhumanity.
The play’s title comes from the Immigration Act’s Guidelines for Officers, which might be a first. “A genuine and stable relationship,” says the Guidelines, “is a relationship which the visa or immigration officer determines.” In other words, these bureaucrats have total power.
Well, at least it’s not ICE. Right?
Playwright Uhyoung Choi has brought his own experience as am immigration lawyer to bear on the tale, allowing the Immigration Act’s words to guide the narrative, and to resonate with the underlying threat we might not always appreciate: deportation. “The immigrant experience is not just about telling stories of devastation. How can you say that immigrant experiences are one thing? It’s not. If an immigrant is telling a story, it’s an immigrant story.”
This story casts its net even wider, telling a story that encompasses the questioners as well as the questioned. It slowly dawns on them, and on us, that the only genuine and stable relationship these bureaucrats has ever had is with each other—the person in the next cubicle.
Set up by memories of films like Green Card we expect lavish helpings of humour. There’s no real humour here however, except with sound (shout out Paige Pomana) but there is plenty of warmth. And while not especially profound, the play is important.
The libertarian in me wants to castigate the arrogance of people invited to judge other people and to change their lives on a whim—and we’re invited to. And it turns out that when it comes to judging any relationship as “genuine and stable,” there could not be two people any less qualified than these two. Yet given that power by government.
It begins like the prologue of a thriller—an (apparently) unrelated conversation on the phone. A risky start, an actor pretending to a one-sided conversation, pulled off superbly by Natasha Daniel, giving her whole character a nervous energy that escalates perfectly at the denouement, where it all makes sense.
It’s hard to play a couple in love, especially when that very love is being judged. Our couple in question—being questioned—is played with a naturalism that fits their role perfectly. It’s believable, we want to tell the bureaucrats. Kudos Junghwi Jo and Jone Capel-Baker who make the hard look easy.
Sets by Chye-Ling Huang are slick, and versatile, maybe a trifle unbattered for government furniture. And with a nod to a favourite film. Their apparent fragility suits the protagonists’ life plans. Lights flicker threateningly when called for (lighting Rae Longshaw-Park). A rear screen (AV design by Darryl Chin) shows applicants’ evidence, and delivers insight into the standards by which these government lackies make their life-changing judgements. (The subjectivity of the rules, says one, is what gives them discretion. And real power.)
Director Marianne Infante pulls it together well. Integration of AV, mime, and movement all helps the theatrical illusion. The play threatens to sink into melodrama about two-thirds through, rescued in the end though by the nagging thought that there’s more going on here.
Proudly Asian Theatre Company exists to tell Asian stories and their wider impact in Aotearoa. It’s doing important theatre. I hope this successful first work after hiatus rekindles their project.
Theatre Peter
Presented by Proudly Asian Theatre with Auckland Live.
Interview with playwright here.
More info here.
Tickets here.
PHOTO CREDITS: John Rata
