It doesn't quite feel accurate to call The Expat Wife a play – it's more of an extended comic anecdote populated with outlandish stereotypes. And if you were to chop 45 minutes off its running time and lose all the musical numbers, it would succeed brilliantly on those terms.
For most of the first act, writer / director Audrey Currie does a fantastic job of keeping the pace up, sketching hilarious cartoons for characters, and slipping in some devious one-liners which her talented cast (herself among them) are confident enough to throw away. For example, a casual remark implying an expat wife couldn't tell the difference between male and female Asians was so lightly delivered that it passed many of the audience by but left some of us in stitches.
And the five principal expat wives plus Jean Jimenez as Anastasia the maid all have excellent timing and an infectious sense of fun. Jo Tan as a Japanese wife with an addiction to ABC stout was riotously, surreally funny and has finally found a vessel big enough to contain all the energy she pours into a role. Vicki Rummun delivered a pert, assertive take on an Essex girl. And Currie herself was dry and amiable as the bewildered new arrival... but really all the lead women are very strong.
The men aren't as good (with the exception of Trey Hehong), but then they aren't given as good material (ditto). They are, though, given quite a lot of material, and the problem seems to be that Currie has written things she didn't need to write and couldn't write well anyway just to give her cast members things to do. Juan Jackson gamely attempts long speeches composed of Elvis song titles that are silly without being even remotely funny. Claude Girardi can't quite carry a sterile, draggy scene about "music therapy". Which brings me to the root of the problem: Currie has no affinity with music – uniquely among the cast she can't sing or dance, and she doesn't know how to use music in a play, yet she does so frequently. The worst offender was the extended medley that starts the evening and briefly left me wishing I had stayed home.
There's a great show in here but it's only an hour long – and if you turn up ten minutes late and leave at the interval, you'll have a spectacular time. But if you stay to the end you're likely to find the charm wears off.