Theatre / “Miss Peony”, Belvoir Theatre. At The Playhouse until August 26. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

THERE’S a lot more to this snazzy production of Michelle Law’s play about ABC (Australian-Born Chinese) identity than a wild and wacky ride through a beauty contest with a ghost.

For despite the fact that, in the hands of director Courtney Stewart, it’s a night of extravagant fun, Law has some very serious issues to debate about the need to preserve one’s cultural heritage and it’s a much wordier play than the publicity would lead you to suspect, delivered with surtitles in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

But, it’s supremely entertaining, punctuated with disco numbers and some hot but odd comic dancing.

It’s all performed under Trent Suidgeest’s glitzy lighting on Jonathan Hindmarsh’s perfectly symmetrical set in a seemly endless variety of costumes, as the characters are led by the nose through a community beauty contest, the ”Miss Peony” of the title.

Lily (Stephanie Jack) is officially the protagonist. Her former beauty queen grandma (Gabrielle Chan) steps from beyond the grave to blackmail her granddaughter into entering the schmaltzy beauty competition on the threat that she’ll be stuck in purgatory for ever if she doesn’t.

After that, the play’s backbone is the contest itself, a series of vignettes steered by the play’s only male character, the handsome contest host Zhen Hua (Jeffrey Liu).

Enter the other emblematic contestants – snobby Marcia (Deborah Faye Lee) looking for love, Joy (Wu) from Taiwan, a quirky gay individualist with a doctorate and Sabrina, (Mabel Li) sexy and ostentatious, with a heavy “Westie” accent.

Lily, the reluctant candidate, looks like a loser from the outset, but she learns to relate to the other characters.

Law’s witty, original play addresses the search for identity, internal racism in the Chinese diaspora, filial obedience to one’s ancestors and a raft of cultural stereotypes that in this time of increasing Sinophobia would be distressing if they weren’t so funny.

A case in point is the hysterical moment in a restaurant when the girls fight to the right to pay the bill, a familiar scene to anyone’s who’s ever enjoyed hospitality in Hong Kong or south-east Asia.

Laura articulates her views on Asian identity in a western country through Lily, but it is Chan as grandmother Adeline who seizes the limelight to become a larger-than-life Tiger Grandma who breaks all the rules you’ve ever heard of about ghosts.

Law has a lot of fun spoofing academic jargon, business bulldust, beauty-show hype and the fledgeling feminism of her characters, eventually bringing the play to a thoughtful end with a bit of love in the air.

This fun-serious show deserves full houses.