The writer of White Pearl once described it as both a black comedy and a corporate play. It is both of these things but I would add, more than a slice of satire, and as the story unravels, themes and threads which stay with the audience long after the lights have faded.

Like so many dramatic presentations it does not start at the beginning but at the point where the thriving cosmetic skin whitening business has crashed ignominiously, due to an advertisement  which was thought to be funny until it clearly was not.

With this disaster comes the desperate unraveling of the ‘we are all one family here’ atmosphere which had prevailed while the business was developing into a successful enterprise.

All the cast, apart from the sleazy ex-boyfriend who is French, are from Asia with English as a second language. Obviously they are fluent but with the odd confusion which lends to the humour. The concept of Asian  as a single  entity is clearly inadequate when you have a group whose members come from China, Japan, Philippines, South Korea and India, and the differences between them become more and more apparent as their sales plummet, and blame is to be attached, but to whom?  The ‘all one family’ becomes a fight for individual pride and survival. In moments of extreme stress one or another will retire to the ‘loo’ which becomes a kind of confessional. This allows a different side to the characters to be revealed.

The cast (Kristy Best, Cheryl Ho, Mayu Wasaki, Nicole Milikov, Lin Yun and Mathew Pearce) are uniformly excellent in this slick, modern, fast moving modern morality play, aided by the lightning and music. They play to their ethnic characters, to just the right side of stereotype.

Underlying the action is a sense of unease; why is white skin better? can you ever be too white? does the Australian colonial past blind us to the fact that we are not only geographically in Asia, but have strong ties with the region through contact, migration, trade and travel?  Is all fair in business, if it leads to profit? These thoughts  follow the laughs, of which there are plenty.
It’s a play that stays with you long after the lights come up and the audience heads for home, or the nearest watering hole. That, to my mind, is a play worth seeing.

Emily Sutherland