It is probably safe to say that unless you have been through the adoption process yourself then, although you can often sympathise with and be knowledgaeable about it, it is impossible to know exactly how people are feeling and to be able to empathise in any meaningful way.
Naomi Sumner Chan's new piece, Same Same Different, tries, in part, to bridge that gap. She has been doing a huge research project and has interviewed and spoken to many trans-racial adoptees from around the world, inviting them to share their stories in this new verbatim theatre piece which intertwines those stories with that of her own, as she herself is a trans-racial adoptee.
Showing my ignorance completely, I did need to do a little research myself, as up until being asked to review this piece I had never heard of the phrase 'trans-racial' in relation to adoption before, and naively thought it had something to do with one's sexual orientation. In layman's terms it simply means that the child being adopted is from a completely different ethnic / racial background than the new parents, and so there is little or no knowledge of or adherence to the adoptees ethnicity. Chan herself being of Chinese origin, and was brought up by white Christian parents.
The play is 75 minutes long and played without interval. One of the 5 cast members plays Naomi (the writer) throughout, whilst the other four play her parents, and the people she meets and interviews during her research.
It is informative and instructional, and the whole does feel extremely worthy and self-aggrandising, however, we do learn much from this piece and so maybe it has to be like that in order to impart the necessary information. I think my main quibble is that the piece is extremely static and very samey; and I did see majority of the audience shifting in their seats after about the first 40 minutes.
The five cast are Huomi Miura (playing Naomi Chan), with Paula Henstock, Stefan Gumbs, Kattreya Scheurer-Smith, and Duggal Ram. Vocally both Miura and Scheurer-Smith were superb; their enunciation and projection was perfect. The others were more naturalistic in their speech patterns and they tended to get lost with some rather poor diction. In fact Scheurer-Smith impressed with her acting ability too, as her lovely interpretion of one of the young girl twins was extremely well observed and so very different from her role as Naomi #2.
Far more a lecture than a piece of entertainment, sincerely and thoughtfully presented.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 15/5/19
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