“Even if you are the dirt under a shoe and people call you ‘Ching Chong’ and do the slit-eye thing, they will still smile, eat your food, yummy yummy, get fat, hopefully have a heart attack sooner than later. They go to Bali for their holidays to buy cheap clothes and drink too much and have sex with young girls and boys. And then they come back with a Buddha statue, plop it on their lawn and vote for Pauline Hanson.” So says Pearl, fierce matriarch of the Wong family, wearing a cheongsam and perched atop a table in her restaurant, The Golden Phoenix. My friend and I clutched each other in frantic agreement, laughing and fired up all at once.

Hsiao-Ling Tang as Pearl in Single Asian Female. Photo © Daniel Boud 

First seen at the Roundhouse Theatre in Brisbane early last year, Michelle Law’s Single Asian Female comes to Belvoir preceded by huge expectations, and I’m happy to say that it more than satisfies them. Smartly directed by Claire Christian and with clever sets and costumes by Moe Assaad (shout out to Pearl’s flesh-coloured socks!), this is a piece...