Review | The Woman in Kenzo review: a musical Sex and the City set in 1970s Hong Kong, production fails to shine despite strong performances and a colourful score
- A Hong Kong musical version of Sex and the City, The Woman in Kenzo follows four women in search of love
- Sadly, the production doesn’t capitalise on its potential, and is marred by some racial stereotyping
A decade in the making, The Woman in Kenzo finally sees the light of day in this Chung Ying Theatre production.
Eight years on, I walked into this three-hour-long show with both anticipation and trepidation. While I had no doubt about Ko’s score – he is still a top talent – the same could not be said of the adaptation of Dunn’s book (published in the 1980s), which in turn is a compilation of his The Woman in Kenzo columns published in City Magazine between the late 1970s and mid-1980s under the pseudonym Mary Chin.
How well would Mary’s tale of a smart, independent, sharp-tongued woman searching for love resonate with today’s audience (including non-Chinese speakers since the show has English surtitles)?
The story is set in 1970s Hong Kong at a time when a well-educated, affluent middle class had begun to emerge with the city’s economic take-off. Mary (played by Pak Ching-ying), together with her three best friends Mimi (Nicole Liu), Jan (Belinda Chan) and Martha (Kay Choi), belong to a new breed of women in their 20s who, with their financial independence and intellectual confidence, believe they can have it all – except for love.
When her boyfriend of two years Andy (Lau Chung-hin) asks her to move in with him (instead of proposing with a ring), Mary decides that is not enough for her; she thinks time is running out fast for her to find a husband, so they break up. Meanwhile, Martha is having issues with her Indian boyfriend and Mimi literally crashes into her future husband.
Audience’s constant clapping interrupts Hong Kong Sinfonietta concert
And that is about it. Directed by stage veteran Roy Szeto, The Woman in Kenzo never quite ventures beyond that “why can’t a smart girl find true love” two-dimensional template. At her secretary’s wedding, Mary laments in a number, “What is wrong with everyone”, that even the badly dressed and ugly can find a match. “Don’t you be like everyone,” she reminds herself.
Is Mary Chin, who is supposed to be intelligent and have great taste, really this crass and shallow? Is this the character Dunn created for City Magazine, which was particularly popular among the intellectual elite in the ’70s and ’80s?
In this post-Sex and the City/Bridget Jones’s Diary era – the notion of great, fun-loving women out of luck with love seems like a very bad cliché. And when musicals can be as innovative and transformative as Lin‑Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s The Book of Mormon, The Woman in Kenzo seems like a real opportunity lost.
With the musical set on the cusp of one of the biggest social and economic shifts in Hong Kong’s recent history, Mary Chin could have been the embodiment of so much more than just a bitter, bitchy, self-pitying snowflake. She really is an unlikeable character; when the subject of cancer is broached, it is merely for dramatic effect.
Alarm bells were really going off when the show resorted to racial stereotypes to portray the Indian boyfriend (Edmond Lo) and a Chinese “comrade”. This is inappropriate in this day and age.
That aside, there were some strong performances from the cast. The four female leads, together with Lau and Leung Chung-hang (as Mary’s other love interest), all sang well and confidently. There isn’t much dancing in this original production but the (limited) choreography from Florence Cheong matches well with Ko’s colourful, rich and genre-crossing musical score.
Eddy Mok’s retro costumes and Jan Wong’s neon set also add value to the production.
The Woman in Kenzo, Chung Ying Theatre Company, until October 31; Kwai Tsing Theatre. Tickets: HK$420, HK$340, HK$260 and HK$180.
