Reviews

Kristina Wong – Going Green the Wrong Way (Manchester)

In Going Green the Wong Way, U.S comedian Kristina Wong explains what being an environmentalist means to her. She shows how committed she is to ‘mother earth’ despite the obstacles that have been thrown her way.

She starts off with the story of her bio fuel run car. She recounts meeting up with a man selling used vegetable oil in an alleyway and her regular battles with the ‘stoner’ mechanic who sold her the car. The story is illustrated by photos, which she had usefully taken throughout its short lifetime and it ends in tragedy (it sets on fire less than a year after she bought it).

This neat narrative turns into a more confusing series of anecdotes in the rest of the show, in which she tells of other ‘green’ adventures in her life. There are her efforts to make people at school recycle through rapping at age eleven; canvassing for a conservationist charity as a teenager; and the gymnastics involved as she experiments with environmental sanitary products.

Wong is a charming performer and it is hard not to like her, but possibly there is something lost in translation; however it isn’t the references to the Kardashians or even to baseball, both of which she helpfully explains for the UK audience, but the whole concept.

She ends the show by explaining that car-less she must take the bus, but for an audience here (even with maps, which explain the huge difference in size between LA and Manchester) it doesn’t really seem such a big deal. Indeed most of ‘being green the Wong way’ seems just like everyday life to us Brits.

– Joanna Ing