Toronto Review: 'Lady Sunrise' at Factory Theatre
Louis Train, Associate Toronto Critic
‘Lady Sunrise’, which premiered February 20 at Toronto’s Factory Theatre, is steeped in glamour but strained through harsh realism.
It follows the lives of six Asian women in a booming Vancouver in 2005, before the reality check of the 2007-8 Financial Crisis and the backlash of the Occupy movement. Tawny Ku (Ma-Anne Dionisio) calls the shots; she makes money like a Rockefeller but talks like Norma Desmond. Her niece, Penny (Lindsay Wu, an absolute sensation in a complex role) gets by mostly on her looks and her auntie’s graces; she is not stupid, but the part she performs for others and herself demands a certain lack of awareness. Banker Wong (Rosie Simon) makes the big bucks as an overworked executive, while Dealer Li (Zoé Doyle) supports her family by taking shifts at the local casino. On the economic and social periphery, Sherry (Belinda Corpuz) and Charmaine (Louisa Zhu) work at an erotic massage parlour, where they are exploited and abused by their bosses and customers.
One by one, the women appear on stage like contestants in a pageant, to tell their stories and beg sympathy from the audience. And one by one, they earn it: Marjorie Chan’s smart, sophisticated script shows off the inner workings of each of her characters with great charm and insight. We have just enough time to be guiled by these women before their lives start spiralling downward, first individually, until, through Chan’s masterful storytelling, their devastations and defeats become interconnected. Lady Sunrise reminds us how tightly our fortunes are interconnected, and to what extent a person’s sense of self can be informed by the other people in her life.
Perhaps Chan’s greatest accomplishment in Lady Sunrise is her ability to blend highs and lows, like a Turner painting, all contrasts and colours, wealth and poverty, kinship and rejection, sex and violence. Although the overall trajectory of the story is downward, the women of Lady Sunrise refuse to be painted by a single palette or viewed through a single lens. Under the direction of Nina Lee Aquino, each of the actors has developed her own voice - her style, her sense of self. Lindsay Wu is a standout as Penny, who’s always depended on the kindness of strangers, and whose identity is shaken when she realises just how little kindness can be found in the world.
Camellia Koo’s gorgeous set evokes the glitz of a beauty pageant, the skyline of a metropolis, and the highs and precarious lows of new money. It is the perfect aesthetic compliment to a powerful new work of theatre.
Photo of L-R: Ma-Anne Dionisio and Lindsay Wu by Dahlia Katz
LADY SUNRISE written by Marjorie Chan and directed by Nina Lee Aquino.
Runs to March 8 at Factory Theatre in the Mainspace, 125 Bathurst Street. For further information, call the Box Office at (416) 504-9971 or visit www.factorytheatre.ca.
The Cast: Belinda Corpuz, Ma-Anne Dionisio, Zoe Doyle, Rosie Simon, Lindsay Wu, Louisa Zhu