'The Hungry Ghost' review — the outstanding Mei Mac makes a striking play all the more compelling

Read our review of Mei Leng Yew’s The Hungry Ghost, now in performances at the Bush Theatre to 31 October.

Summary

• Mei Leng Yew’s debut play The Hungry Ghost premieres at the Bush Theatre
• Mei Mac is outstanding as a young woman torn between her parents and her white girlfriend
• The play features elements of horror alongside the push and pull of cultural tradition
• Ailin Conant's striking production features evocative lighting by Cheng Keng

When Mei Mac played Mei, the four-year-old heroine in the acclaimed stage adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro, she became the first East Asian woman to be nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actress. It was a performance so convincing that it was difficult to believe we were watching an adult at all. Here, in Mei Leng Yew’s debut play The Hungry Ghost, that same transformative skill is found again – this time, she jumps between a whole cast of characters, including a Chinese mother and a young Scottish girl, before our eyes. She makes an already striking play about the push and pull between cultural tradition and independence all the more compelling.

But primarily, Mac plays our protagonist, a 22-year-old moving out for the first time to live with her white girlfriend, Naomi. There’s just one problem: her parents don’t know about the relationship, while Naomi believes they have no secrets at all. And then there’s the fact that it is the first day of Ghost Month, when it is advised that you don’t make any big life decisions – and you definitely shouldn’t leave the house after dark, as hungry ghosts from the netherworld are desperate to attach themselves to the living. It’s the perfect recipe for a happily-ever-after gone wrong.

At first, Ghost Month is treated with eye rolls. But then, after she ignores her mother’s warning and picks up a pound she finds on the street, an eerie spirit arrives in the form of the manically grinning Isabella Wei, and things start to get a little bit weird. Leng Yew’s script sees the two actors moving as one, with the ghost taking control of the girl’s mind and body. She longs for Naomi with an almost primal desperation, then for the comforts of her mother’s home cooking. The ghost becomes a physicalisation of her competing desires: to fulfil her parents’ dreams and do well in her lawyer's training contract, and also to follow her heart.

Blending romance with full-blown terror, the stage is flushed in pink light designed by Cheng Keng before descending into sudden, scream-inducing blackouts. Hunger takes over the girl’s body, causing her to raid the shelves at Sainsbury’s and gorge on fistfuls of raw meat. It could very well be a scene from a body-horror film, with one scene seeing a tongue stretched long out of a mouth – if it weren’t for the fact that, in Leng Yew’s hands, the grotesque is often very funny too.

Directed by Ailin Conant, the play captures the feeling of being caught between two identities – and the battle to forge a path of your own between them. The sounds of a second-generation community sing: Cantonese phrases sit alongside English ones, while the little rituals and habits passed down through the generations rule the family home. The final ghost speech could use slightly more space and clarity, but this play more than establishes Leng Yew as a very original and perceptive writer. One to watch.

The Hungry Ghost is at the Bush Theatre to 31 October. Book The Hungry Ghost tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: The Hungry Ghost (Photos by Corinne Cumming)