Cam (Angus Bhattacharya) is not having the best day: a complaint raised against him by a customer earlier in his shift about getting an order wrong has him on edge, and he’s shifty and nervous. It’s a bit like the story I once heard about a rookie policeman who was asked to go through a list of questions with a victim of a road traffic collision. He asked her if she was alone in the vehicle when the collision occurred. She said yes. He kept to the script and immediately thereafter asked her if she was driving. Here, Lili (Feifei Xiang) wants the chicken option on the menu. Cam responds by asking if she wants the chicken or the vegan option. Lili (roughly pronounced ‘lee-lee’, as opposed to ‘lil-lee’, hence the show’s slightly cumbersome title) isn’t sure if this guy is on the same planet.
Leaving aside the oddity, unlikelihood and possible moral dubiousness of a café worker apparently on probation sitting down to talk to a customer whilst still on shift, repeatedly, Cam and Lili hit it off, at least partly because of his curiosity of her. Lili is on a ‘graduate visa’, which gives her permission to stay and work in the UK for at least two years after graduating from a university-level course. (The application fee alone for a graduate visa at the time of writing is £822, and there’s also a ‘healthcare surcharge’, usually £1,035 for each year of UK residency.)
Lili, in line with a lot of younger people with most of their lives still ahead of them – from wherever they are in the world – isn’t necessarily quite ready to settle down, even if Cam is. Cue bickering and disagreement of opinion over their possible futures. This is a well-trodden path, as is a sub-narrative about Eastern and Western hygiene and household habits (Lili, despite being far from posh, still dresses for dinner). The set is versatile, and there’s a part of me that wonders why more shows don’t go for this option – cardboard boxes of various sizes, and plenty of them, that can transform from a café table to a front room sofa to anything else required sufficiently and convincingly.
It’s more of a play with songs than a fully-fledged musical, such that the ‘sort of’ in the show’s title is justified. I would imagine almost anyone who has worked in customer-facing retail jobs will recognise and appreciate the frustration of having to maintain calm professionalism in the face of highly uncivilised behaviour from certain customers. Elsewhere, a brief discussion about the gender identity of strong language was more amusing than interesting, at least to me, although there was a valid point about certain insults that end up indirectly directed at women even when directly directed at men. More interesting was the use of emotive language, easier for Lili in English than in her native Chinese. The phrase ‘I love you’ is bandied about far more regularly in the West, Lili says.
This is, despite some very macro-level themes, a deeply personal story, which even explores Lili’s regular attendance at a non-conformist church, where she enjoys the contemporary music played by a house band. As Cam points out, there are live music venues in town with a better atmosphere: Lili counters that the smiles, airs and graces of parishioners are preferable to her than the micro-aggressions of groups of men in pubs. There could be a whole other show in itself about how organised religion attempts to retain some kind of relevance in a supposedly more enlightened twenty-first century world (somebody somewhere must still be going to church, otherwise they would have all closed by now). Here, there are no easy answers to the various dilemmas faced by Cam and Lili in this multilayered and multilingual production.
Review by Chris Omaweng
The story follows Lili, a Chinese international student who becomes a perfume store employee. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she gets into a conflict with Cam, a fellow service industry worker. Strangely enough, this leads to them living together. Despite cultural conflicts and petty quarrels, they develop a deep connection, seemingly embodying the essence of a beautiful romance. However, as Lili’s visa expiration looms, turmoil arises, threatening their harmonious existence and throwing Lili’s life into disarray.
Producer, Writer and Actor: Feifei Xiang
Director and Actor: Angus Bhattacharya
Musical Director: Weiling Zhou
Set and Costume Design: Jessica (Wenjing) Ji
Composer: Yinhe Tao
Associate Director: Xiaowen Xu
Lighting Design: Sanli Wang
LILI, THE CHINESE GIRL, NOT LILY – A NEW MUSICAL (*SORT OF)
Etcetera Theatre
5 and 6 August 2024
