Theatre review: The Hungry Ghost

What does a monologue for two people look like? In Mei Leng Yew's debut play The Hungry Ghost Mei Mac plays the Girl, a character in her twenties trying to figure out how to balance her need for independence with the demands of her family and her Chinese heritage. She's recently moved out of her parents' home to move in with her girlfriend of three months, Naomi, except she's not told her parents that: Every morning she tells Naomi she's going to pick up more of her stuff, before creeping into the house to pretend she's been sleeping there all night. In the middle of all this upheaval she forgets her mother's warning that it's the Chinese month when ghosts roam the earth, and picks up a coin from the street - a trap laid by a ghost (Isabella Wei) who latches onto her, hanging around in the background at first but increasingly possessing and controlling her body.The titular Hungry Ghost is indeed hungry for food, making her host binge-eat but never finding satisfaction, but as she…