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By Alexandra Carroll  
 
AziaCity.com 10 January 2007

This slickly produced, fast-paced show is evidence that Rick Lau has near-mastered the complex art of the cabaret.

How's he done it? Like all good cabaret, it's success lies in its seeming simplicity. The set-up of "Men in Love" is straightforward: Rick, an actor, spends his time gazing out his window into his neighbors' apartments -watching them by day and night. From there we enter the worlds of the men who inhabit apartments 18C to 22F. Each man tells us about their kind of love - beginning with the last thing the object of their affection said to them. We learn of sacrifice, jealousy, heartbreak and even the joys of self-love ("Making Love Alone").

All very simple but Lau does it brilliantly. Each of his characters lives their short lives to the full. His detailed characterization leaves you wanting to know more about the pilot in apartment 18D, the soulful and mysterious Benjamin in 20H and we all wanted more of drama queen Mitchell (26A) after his show-stopping "Shopping Cart of Love." Lau's song choice too is brilliant. Cabaret can all too easily turn into mush, suffering from obvious song choices (Brecht, Sondheim, Bacharach et al). But Lau and his collaborator Tony Taylor have selected lesser-known numbers (including a Canto-pop tune) that are so perfect they almost seemed written especially for the show.

"Men in Love" was a smooth affair partly due to the talents of Lau's musical director and accompanist Craig Renshaw. Renshaw was flawless and even joined in with backing vocals on several numbers (including the big encore). The usual singer-accompanist banter was not needed in this show - the pair was obviously completely comfortable and confident with one another. Never mind that the encore didn't have anything to do with the show at all - it was so much fun it didn't matter anyway

This production is a world-premiere for Lau who will next take the show on to the Glamour Bar in Shanghai and then back home to Sydney. Joining him on tour is his director and collaborator Tony Taylor who visits Lau's native Hong Kong for the first time. The pair should be proud of "Men in Love" - intimate, engaging cabaret at its best.

Jan 12 and Jan 13 performances sold out. Tickets still available for Jan 14, 7:30pm. Fringe Club, 2 Lower Albert Rd., Central.
 

By Kay Ross

State of the Arts, 13 February 2006


The ‘Australia on Stage' program of the City Festival 2006 at the Fringe Club in Hong Kong featured three multicultural Australian stand-up comedians who deconstructed their Asian-Australian-ness: Tibetan-Australian comedian Nick Sun, Anglo-Indian Melbourne girl Georgina Naidu and Hong Kong-born cabaret artiste Rick Lau.

Benny Chia, the Artistic Director of the Fringe Club, said: "We love working with Aussie performers; their shows usually have a certain rawness and authenticity about them that suit us to a T, and local audiences have embraced them. Since the announcement of Keating's Creative Nation policy, the Australian government (through the Consulate-General here) has been putting its money where its mouth is. We've been working with Australian artists and arts organisations since 1987, and we've introduced at least 100 acts from Down Under to Hong Kong audiences. Every year we try to bring in new acts and fresh talents to whet people's appetite and keep their interest up."

The "Australia on Stage" program was sponsored by the Australian Consulate-General in Hong Kong. Murray Cobban, Australian Consul-General in Hong Kong, said: "Hong Kong audiences love Australian comedians because of their unique sense of humour. Their witty performances are often inspired by individual experiences in the multicultural living environment of Australia. The ‘Australia on Stage' program of this year's City Festival is a celebration of the best Australian-Asian talents nurtured in an open and culturally diverse country."

Award-winning comedian Nick Sun is known for his self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek style. In his show Whatever (18-21 January), he described his comedy as "funny, hopefully". Throughout his act, Nick pointedly insisted that his ethnicity was irrelevant, thereby ironically drawing attention to it. One quip that drew big laughs from Hong Kong audiences was: "I've been here for four days and I still haven't found Chinatown."

Melbourne comedian Georgina Naidu poked fun at the weirdness of her Anglo-Indian background in her witty, warm-hearted autobiographical show about home and belonging, Yellow Feather (25-27 January). Backing her up on the onstage sound system was DJ Schmidti, who is of Indo-Fijian-Australian heritage. One of Georgina's funniest lines was: "Essendon football team is so good there's even a place named after them."

Cabaret artiste Rick Lau returned to the City Festival after last year's sell-out show, How Now, Rick Lau, with SunRice (25-27 January). It was a light-hearted romp through his life and career, from his childhood in Hong Kong to IT jobs in Europe and the US, and his experiences as a migrant in Australia. Hong Kong audiences, even those who don't speak Cantonese, enjoyed his scenes and asides spoken in Cantonese, because the characters were instantly recognisable. And drawing huge applause was his version of the tongue-twisting song I've Been Everywhere, Man, featuring Hong Kong as well as Australian place names.

Outside of the ‘Australia on Stage' program, but still part of the City Festival, visual artist and performer Greg Leong from Tasmania was a guest speaker at a symposium, "Arts Connections: D.I.Y. Touring Arts in Asia". Also speaking at that symposium was Douglas Gautier, Executive Director of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, who is due to take up the role of Director of the Adelaide Festival Centre in May.

By Ng Yi-Sheng
Fridae,  12 May 2006

One's a campy, in-your-face Filipino-Californian drama queen. The other's a Hong Kong-Australian ex-computer engineer stud next door. What could they have in common? They're the funnymen of "Camp Comedy", the side-splitting comedy show coming soon to Zouk, Singapore.
 
 
If you've already got tickets to watch "Camp Comedy", you're in for a treat. Right beside our homegrown acts of Kumar and Broadway Beng, we'll be having the pleasure of watching two guest comedians from overseas: the fabulously wacky Lounge-zilla and the charmingly subdued Rick Lau, two internationally acclaimed gay Asian comedians. They're both darlings in completely different ways, and I had the luck of snaring interviews with the two of them.

Lounge-zilla: 'LOUNGE-ZILLA! - The Armageddon of Queer Cabaret' is an evening of twisted music and politically-incorrect comedy. With the help of my very own 'Scary Manilow' at the keys, I warble about such off-kilter taboo subjects as sex change operations, love triangles, stalking and fag hags. All the songs are original and brutally comic! The show is in-your-face, musically camp and boldly interactive with the audience. Yes, you too can be a guest star on my show!

Rick: ‘SunRice' basically follows the journey of a boy, growing up in Hong Kong and having this lifelong dream of getting married and living happily ever after ever since he saw Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding on the telly. Then afterwards, it's about what happens to him emotionally, geographically, sexually and spiritually. It's about childhood, dreams, reality, traveling and finding yourself, told through storytelling and song. A lot of it's based on my own life.

æ: So, how did you guys get started in showbiz?

Lounge-zilla: I suppose you can blame my showbiz career on Andy Movesian. He was also the HOT football team captain and most popular kid in the school! But when I'd show up to watch his football games, all I could focus on were the cheerleaders! They were the real stars of the event! I WANTED THAT! I didn't get picked to be on the cheerleading squad - those bitches - but I did get cast in a few musicals soon after! I was singing, I was dancing, and people were cheering! I had found my inner-cheerleader through performing in theatre!

Rick: I was a bit of a dork at first. Then one day I just made a decision to quit my computer consultancy job and start up with a drama school here. I was 28 years old, and you know how they say an important life decision comes every seven years? I spent a year at NAIDA (Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art), and soon after that I was in the Sydney tour of the nude gay cabaret show, Naked Boys Singing!was quite nerve-racking, but it's great training for an actor, because if you can go up there naked in front of hundreds of people, then you can do anything.

æ: What are the weirdest or most embarrassing experiences you've had onstage, then?

Rick: It was winter when we did Naked Boys Singing!, and sometimes the temperature difference between backstage and onstage was quite big. So even though we had been working out with our personal trainers, and we had lots of porn magazines offstage so we could do a bit "fluffing" before we came on, sometimes we walked on stage and we would suddenly feel a wave of cold air and there it goes - "shrivelling up".

Lounge-zilla: True, every comedian has horror stories! It comes with the territory. I once performed at a huge gay/lesbian convention in New York City - a really big deal - anyone and everyone who is gay in America knows about this event - and the comedy stage audience consisted of mostly homeless people who didn't have a clue what was going on. They were there for the free potato chips and cookies. I don't know how they got in to this high-profile event but when I made them laugh, well, I felt I had really arrived!

æ: How did your family react when they found out you were going into drama?

Rick: Well, growing up as an Asian boy, you're not encouraged to do theatre. And I've got a typically Chinese family, so they nagged me about getting a real job for a long time. But they have seen my cabaret show and they really enjoyed it. Seeing them in the audience was really special.

Lounge-zilla: I come from a Filipino-American family of a mom, a dad and three sisters. Only my mom has had the guts to see one of my shows and, though she's a conservative Catholic Filipina, she loved it! Feather boas, naughty humor, suggestive dance moves - she applauded it all! Of course, I think she has a bizarre form of 'theatrical Alzheimers' because from that day on, she doesn't remember the costumes, the songs or ever being in the audience. She makes a great Chicken Adobo, though and to this day she tells me that I'm her favorite son!

æ: Do you think it's hard for Asian minorities to make it in theatre?

Rick: Absolutely. As an Asian actor the work in Australia is pretty limited. That's why I decided to create my own work instead of getting depressed and waiting for the agent to call me. It generates momentum and it opens doors for you, so a few years ago I was able to take this show to Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Lounge-zilla: I think that's both true and false. Like Margaret Cho, I have to aim for comedy that, in all its truthful offensiveness, relates to everyone, and I've been featured on the covers of some of the biggest newspapers in America - the Washington Post/Express, San Francisco Weekly, Miami Express News, Theatermania.com in New York City - and mostly it's because I'm Asian and I'm something different to look at.

æ: How do you think a Singaporean audience - possibly a little more reserved and virgin to cabaret - is going to respond?

Rick: I've never been to Singapore before. But going back to Hong Kong to do my show in front of other Asians was very special. Until a few years ago, in every country I lived in, I tried to abandon my own Asianness. Now I think we spend one half of our lives running away from home and the other half trying to find our roots again.

Lounge-zilla: I am so excited to perform in Singapore - I've heard so many wonderful things about the city! Mostly, I'm coming for the food. I hear y'all have great 'eats' - I can't wait to stuff my face! And to top it all off, this will be my Asian debut! I'm sure Singapore audiences will love being a little bit naughty with me. And, as with any virgin, I promise to be gentle. And memorable! You never forget your first time!
 

By Jo Higgins
State of the Arts, 28 September 2005



"When people ask I'm going to say I'm English - I'm as much English as I am Indian. People are only interested in what's different." Georgina Naidu's autobiographical celebration of her modern Australian/Indian upbringing, her early penchant for dress-ups and fantasy and her passion for fantastic '80s music, leg warmers and performing is joyous and hilarious.

Naidu has a natural gift for comedy, both verbally and physically - she is self-deprecating, ebullient and mischievous. Inhabiting her earlier self - at four, at 10 and in late adolescence, Naidu is charming, convincing and entirely sincere. Both re-enacting and recounting some of her earliest memories and experiences, a clever use of a screen backdrop allows for the incorporation of images and photographs into the performance. Footage from the eponymous Rawhide, starring Daniel Boone explains the origins of the self-given name ‘Yellowfeather' - a tribute to the only Indians the earnest Naidu could see on the TV.

A rich fantasy life, a gift for storytelling and an ability to find fun in situations not immediately brimming with it allows Naidu to make Yellowfeather a "celebration". Without glossing over some of the incredibly hurtful, difficult and confronting encounters with stereotyping, racism and prejudice, Naidu uses these experiences as a vehicle and an opportunity to "laugh about and celebrate those difficult moments in life that help form who we are and guide us to where we'd like to be."

A central feature to the production is the incorporation of live music, thanks to Indo-Fijian Australian, DJ Schmidti. Playing and mixing a fabulous series of '80s pop songs with Bollywood soundtracks, DJ Schmidti and Naidu keep the energy of this hour-long production bubbling along with the fabulous music which becomes almost another character.

Yellowfeather follows Naidu from her early days as a four year old in love with Daniel Boone through to her breakthrough role as Phrani Gupta on ABC's hit show Seachange to today. Naidu's initial Seachange audition and complete bafflement at the mechanics of sari-wearing are just two of the comedic highlights of this production.

Autobiographical theatre is proving to be a popular form of playwriting - I have David Page's Page 8 in mind and as Naidu herself says at the conclusion, there are many things not said - and many more that should be. For Naidu, as with Page, theatre again proves that it can be as cathartic and instructive as it can be magical.

By Ben Hurley
The Epoch Times, 25 September 2005


What started as an entry in a short play competition has become the Opera House's latest stage show, as actor Georgina Naidu goes live with her life-long search for identity.

In her frank and comical autobiographical show Yellow Feather, Georgina collaborates with DJ Schmidti to perform her life of searching for representation in popular culture, beginning with her childhood as a "confused four year old" from an English-Indian family in 1970s suburban Melbourne.

"Once I started to actually sit down and write it I realised that I was always searching for myself in popular culture, so there didn't seem to be any representation of what I knew as my Australian experience," Georgina told The Epoch Times.

"I never saw any families like my family or the families I mixed with. All I saw were white families."

Assuming that Australian television was a reflection of Australian society, Georgina as a four year old began to fashion herself around the American Indian character Yellow Feather in Daniel Boone, and grew up thinking Stevie Wonder was her uncle.

"Anything I saw that was vaguely familiar I would really latch onto," she says.

"The same with music. My family in the early seventies, they were obsessed with Stevie Wonder... As a really little kid they'd say, you know, we love him, and I thought he was an uncle who lived in another country, who was too busy to come and visit."

In her adult life as depicted in the play Georgina made her way through drama school and at 29 eventually landed a role in Seachange as "traditional" Indian woman Phrani before finding her place on the stage as a performer.

"I guess what I was trying to do was have a laugh about and celebrate the difficult moments in life that end up forming who we are, and directing where we would like to be... so you can have a look at it, think about it and have a laugh and then move on but be informed by all those things."

Yellow Feather is showing from September 21 to October 1 in The Studio at Sydney Opera House.

By Alex Wheaton
dB Magazine, Issue #370, 2-15 November 2005


It may not be a typical weekend for Rick Lau, who spends some of his free time house-hunting for the perfect apartment near Sydney's Coogee beach before he heads down to Adelaide for this year's Feast Festival.

Lau is appearing in his one man cabaret show 'How Now Rick Lau', which is, as you might expect from the name of the show, quite a bit autobiographical with a little artistic license thrown in. The bit about the next door neighbour being a Turkish oil wrestler is made up, he admits.

"I want to share with a few friends, and so we're looking for the perfect apartment at the right price, but it still needs to be in walking distance from the beach..." he purrs. A dedicated sunlover, Lau is an intriguing man: how many gay Asian cabaret performers who hold a degree in Computing Science can you name? Hmmm, one.

"Yeah, I really likes the hot weather, so I'm hoping it will warm up when I come down there - I lived in Adelaide for two years when I came to university, so I know all about your summers," he laughs.

A native of Hong Kong, Lau headed off to see more of the world when he was seventeen, and hasn't looked back. "I spent four years working overseas, and had clients in the 'States and Germany, and I still have mixed feelings about Hong Kong." Sure, he goes back to visit his family, and earlier this year wwent back to perform the show over there.

"I thought that it would be a very special experience, and it was, because my family came along to see me perform, but this is in an area where the arts is not so supported."

The cultural differences and expectations must be enormous, I posit. "In general I guess Asians are into having a good career and making money to support the family," he asnswers carefully, "and if you don't the pressures are great." That will all sound quite familiar to anyone who has attempted to make a career in the arts, I guess, but Lau knows other cards in the deck are marked against him.

"Being a gay Asian in Australia isn't so easy sometimes, and there's even expectations within the gay community... there's what I call the Gaysia complex, and it's all about whether someone is a rice Queen or not. Gay Asian men seem to be expected to behave in a certain way.

These are the sort of issues explored by him in 'How Now...', which follows the journey of an insomniac blogger from 3m to 7am as he finds his own way within society and attempts to form friendships. "Where do you place a misfit, a minority within a minority within a minority?" asks Lau, making the rhetorical question sound vaguely wistful.

It would be wrong to think this is a show which is merely a catalogue of his complaints: a commissioned work from the development studio at the Sydney Opera House, this is a show which has seen Lau in full flight.

"I'd done a few cabaret shows - my last show was 'Sunrise', and people liked it. Over here it's a totally different culture and people are encouraged to follow their ideas," he says, thinking back to Hong Kong. Even so, it's been a bit of a struggle - having done some acting he auditioned for NIDA and was accepted, then followed that up with bit parts in musical theatre and scored a role in 'Hair'.

Then not much happened.

In casting there's to often the likelihood of an Asian man being typecast, and that's not hard to imagine, but Lau saw the possibilities of turning this into a positive. "In the cabaret area there's very few Asian men and being one is possibly a way of being more obvious, more noticed. I'm really enjoying the chance to tour this performance and show people what I can do."