Review: Corporate Struggles, Prejudice, and Privilege And Ultimately Friendship Come Together In RICE

Friday 28th July 2017, 7pm, SBW Stables Theatre

Exploring entitlement, prejudice and connection, RICE gives a voice to a sector of Australian society too often omitted from our stages. This new Australian work by Michele Lee initially looks like a commentary on corporate greed but in reality, delves deeper to more universal and human experiences.

The premise of RICE is that the corporate wunderkind Nisha, a 28-year-old second generation Australian of Indian descent, is a workaholic ambitious young woman who has achieved the rank of Executive Officer at rice producer Golden Fields. Nisha's level 20 office is cleaned by the 61-year-old Chinese immigrant Yvette, a single mother who has lived in Australia for decades and has found herself the victim of competition and undercutting. The two are initially at loggerheads. Nisha treats Yvette like a second-class citizen that should be cleaning up whatever mess she chooses to make regardless of the cut price and cut time conditions the "Chinese cleaner" is working under. Yvette thinks Nisha, who she refers to as the "Indian Princess", is a spoilt brat, self-entitled, arrogant and out of touch with reality and won't be intimidated by the threats to complain about the quality of cleaning. Over time the walls between the two eventually come down as they form a friendship in the moments at the end of the day when Nisha is eating yet another dinner at her desk and Yvette is doing her rounds of two minute cleans, helping each other with the challenges going on in their lives.

Lee has written the work as an intricate two hander which director Lee Lewis (also Artistic Director of Griffin Theatre Company) has presented with skilful simplicity. Renee Mulder (Designer) has given Lewis a simple space to work in with white walls, green corporate carpeting and contemporary desk complete with drawers and the contentious waste bin. A cleaner's trolley sits in the 'corridor' outside of the office. As the set does not change, Jason Glenwright's lighting (lighting designer) and Wil Hughes AV design and composition are used to indicate shifts in time along with changes in location from Nisha's office and the building's basement where Yvette's boss Valerie is based, to places where the women spend their personal time, and even India where Nisha is trying to secure a large business deal.

N

isha is presented in corporate pantsuit and heels which gives her the femininity whilst ensuring that she is seen as a formidable player in the corporate world. This formality is contrasted with Yvette's comfortable shoes and polo shirt and utilitarian pants, suitable to her role as a cleaner. Sometimes the addition of an item of clothing is used to help indicate the other roles but for the most part it comes down to physicality and speech patterns.

Kristy Best as Nisha and Hsiao-Ling Tang as Yvette are perfectly paired to capture the cultural differences without turning their roles into caricatures and they deftly handle the additional characters which the two women interact with. The work weaves between narrated recollection and playing out the memories that saw the pair develop a friendship and the breaking of the fourth wall helps draw the audience in so they want to invest in the women's story.

Best captures the cocky confidence of the new generation of young corporates who have quickly climbed the corporate ladder through long nights and apparent lack of care for anyone but themselves. Beneath Nisha's all business image, Best gives her a humanity as the granddaughter wanting to make her grandmother, affectionately referred to as 'Didima', who migrated from West Bengal, proud of her and live up to her dream that Nisha become a CEO. She conveys that Nisha lives with a degree of obligation about everything she does, from being the breadwinner for her family to staying with the flaky food entrepreneur Avineet who she's been dating since high school. Best's interpretations of the other characters in Yvette's life are presented with humour as she draws on accents and changes in posture to transition from Yvette's 60-year-old Russian boss Valerie to her 20 something university dropout daughter Sheree.

As Yvette is a Chinese Australian immigrant, Tang allows her expression to still have inflections of English as a second language but that is pretty much the extent of the stereotyping that she employs, giving the work an honesty. This ensures that the humour comes from more than just accents and stereotypes that other productions use when the do choose to include non-white characters. Tang ensures that Yvette has an air of wisdom and maturity to go with the single mother's pragmatic nature, setting her up to be a support for Nisha, when Nisha finally comes around to realising that she's not that different to Yvette as they are both trying to earn a better future for their families. As the characters from Nisha's life, Tang is fabulous at delivering the broad ocker accent for Nisha's colleague Tom and the confident swagger of her boss, American Graeme.

RICE is a humorous, heart-warming tale of friendship that shows that everyone has their own challenges and that it isn't that hard to be nice, and who knows, you could learn a thing or two or make friends. It also highlights that even though we usually think of prejudice from the mainstream directed towards the different, there are also prejudices between minority groups, regardless of how long you've been exposed to a multicultural society. It is refreshing to see a part of Australian society not often seen on stage given a voice, presented with a respect but without taking themselves too seriously. A wonderfully new Australian work that should be supported and promoted so that more stories like this are given the chance to be told.

RICE

SBW Stables, Kings Cross

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