Su Mi @ Underbelly Cowgate
An extraordinary clowning persona and a glorious reclaiming of space, Su Mi throws the rules of respectability out the window in their debut Fringe show
Su Mi sits on stage as the audience enters, their top half obscured by curtains. "I can't see", she bellows plaintively, and so an audience member takes courage and tentatively pulls aside the curtain, only to recoil in outright horror. It's our first glimpse of the extraordinary clowning persona Su Mi has fashioned: white face, blackened teeth, smeared lipstick and wild orange fright wig.
A bona fide motherfucker – on the prowl for mothers to fuck – they’re bullish, lascivious, crotch-scratching, belching, glorying in their body. Grunting, Mi squeezes themselves into dungarees adorned with clown horns and invites the audience to gather round and have a squeeze, then shudders ecstatically at the side of the stage, returning to mime a post coital fag. Later, she serenades her breasts – twins or 'maybe sister and brother', Mi sings, 'given one is bigger than the other'.
There are some sideways moments of autobiography: a Powerpoint about the Animorphs YA book series, its theme of weird mutability the only representation that spoke to them growing up as they tried to navigate their dual British Asian identity. It's a loose array of bits, but Su Mi's persona is so richly comic that the show holds together; besides, that improvised quality is an essential part of the freedom they’re carving out.
That offer of freedom from decorum and seemliness is a relief to us all, but it's especially significant given Su Mi's dual identity and the stifling stereotypes that confine Asian women. Small, submissive, quiet, demure; she lists a few and then refutes them, needlessly, because every part of Su Mi’s persona is built in contradiction and refusal. THISMOTHERPHUCKER is a massive fuck you to respectability politics, and a glorious reclaiming of space.
Su Mi: THISMOTHERPHUCKER, Underbelly Cowgate (Iron Belly), until 24 Aug (not 12, 19), 6.40pm, £8.50-12.50