Camden Fringe Review: Your Favo(u)rite American Woman ★★★★

Ciarlene Coleman’s second solo show, Your Favo(u)rite American Woman, which has just finished a Camden Fringe run, both tells a personal story and also challenges the audience to examine stereotypes they may have unwittingly absorbed, treading a path adjacent to that of Kimber Lee’s 2023 untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon.

Coleman is a remarkably gifted and lively performer who embraces her role as C (an Asian American woman and a history professor’s assistant, now living and working in the UK) with full verve. Creative use of technology welcomes the audience to the show as students asking us to “talk among ourselves and think of our favourite American woman.” Immediately after, we are confronted with the images of many Asian American women (such as activist Yuri Kochiyama) and are asked to consider why we had not considered them too.

It is a fair and important question, though the primary school teacher in me feels it is worth remembering that, when put on the spot, people sometimes freeze up. In that moment of forced-participation fear, the minds of my adult children and I were emptied, and we could hardly remember a single American woman at all! Only on the way back to the station were we thinking of people like Serena Williams and Anne Tyler, and my personal hero Georgia Gilmore – who fed and funded the Montgomery bus boycott. Notably, even with time, our knowledge of Asian American women was low (though we felt much better equipped when it came to British Asian heroines).

That said, it set the tone for a show that told both C’s story but also widened the lens to look at how Filipina women have been regarded by Westerners. In the classroom scenes, we are introduced to phrases such as “American exceptionalism” and “American imperialism”, alongside the word “Orientalism”. Coleman has an extraordinary way with words, and I was impressed with the plays made on the word “orient”: talking of needing to orient herself or being disoriented, as ways of explaining her navigation between the Western and Eastern parts of her life.

Video clips of the “Great American Dream” – buttoned-up white housewives and their looked after husbands – run alongside clips of more difficult life in the Philippines and slides showing American warmongering.

We are also party to three conversations: with C’s British boss, with her husband and with her dad. Each of these one-sided conversations (we have to imagine the other side) is masterfully performed by Coleman and gives us deep insight into the constraints she feels she is given by the males in her life.

Also in the mix are song and dance numbers, Coleman sings with a warm, jazz-style voice and excels at making eye contact with the audience and drawing them in. At times, the songs and sultry moves further underline her representation of Filipina women seeking the white male gaze which enhances her message but also makes for deliberately uncomfortable viewing as the audience is strategically placed in the position of colonial voyeurs.

If this sounds like a lot for a fifty minute show, that is because it is. As a script, it could be that choosing one of these throughlines – the classroom, the experiences of the Philippines, the life of C – would have made a stronger show. Certainly, adding detail about moving to Britain seemed a step too far for the time given.

However, as a showcase for Coleman’s formidable talent, it is all here. There was not a minute when she was anything less than committed and she had the audience utterly captivated whether we were being danced for or lectured on academic terms. The pleasure of the Fringe is that actors can experiment with form and audiences can have windows into new worlds. In this, the play is a definite success.

Read our interview with Ciarlene Coleman here.

Your favo(u)rite American Woman is one of the Red Bus picks for the Camden Fringe, find out about the others :