A ‘top coat’ is the final layer of varnish or paint that is placed on something to finish it off. In this new play by Michelle Law, it refers to the polish that disgruntled nail technician Winnie applies to her demanding clients’ fingertips.
The gloss and veneer of a ‘top coat’ could also signify the outer self that someone shows to the world. In Winnie’s case, her ‘good Asian girl’ persona barely contains a woman who wants to tell her entitled customers exactly where to go, and to run her own salon where she only takes on clients she likes. Winnie’s client Kate, while she looks down on Winnie (indeed, she barely sees her as a person), must equally put on a suffer-and-smile veneer at work when her chronically stupid male boss yet again takes credit for one of her ideas.
Although they are poles apart in their working lives, Winnie and Kate are equally dissatisfied with their lot. One night at the salon when they are both grumbling as Winnie begrudgingly fixes Kate’s nails, there is a power cut and in the manner of body swap comedies like Freaky Friday or Dating the Enemy, they find themselves magically transformed into each other’s bodies.
Once they get over the shock, Winnie needs to now take on the TV execs and colleagues at Kate’s workplace, MBC, while Kate must learn to literally ‘kowtow’ to clients just as annoying as she herself once was.
Asian-Australian playwright Michelle Law had never had a manicure before she wrote this play. She was driven to create the work in part it by this very discomfort – ie. her innate aversion to be catered to physically by “another Asian person” in a subservient role. The idea of flipping roles and engineering a ‘power shift’ – of “having a white person in Australia learn for a microsecond how it feels to be treated like a second-class citizen” – was, to her, too intriguing not to explore.
Amongst colourful, arresting sets, Kimie Tsukakoshi’s Winnie is vibrant and appealing, holding the audience’s collective gaze when she is on stage. As Kate, veteran Sydney Theatre Company actress Amber McMahon is a worthy ‘adversary’, conveying a middle-class middle manager who takes out her frustrations on those occupying the rungs below her.
The director and design team for Top Coat are all Asian-Australian creatives – a rare occurrence on the Australian stage. As director Courtney Stewarts says, this play is demanding “a higher standard for the ways people of colour are represented in the stories we see on stage and on screen.” It is also apt for its time as we all, in the later stages of the pandemic, explore our unconscious biases, try to be kinder and more respectful to each other and learn to live less angrily and more compassionately, side by side.
Top Coat
Sydney Theatre Company
Until 6 August, 2022
