Yellow Fever is an original musical cabaret entirely performed, written and produced by musical theatre performer Kelly Lim Harris. It’s clear from the first song that Harris is such a star. She’s got a great voice, infectious charisma and her writing skills match her talents as a performer.
Heading into Yellow Fever, I expected that Harris would share stories from her experiences in the dating world as a woman with a Malaysian Chinese mother and New Zealand-European father. The show, after all, is called Yellow Fever, a slang term which refers to white men who have a fetish for Asian women. And this expectation was absolutely met: much of the show oscillated expertly between effortless humour and palpable disgust as Harris chronicled her stories. Harris framed her anecdotes around a pertinent question: Do you love me, or the idea of me?
What I was most impressed by was how Harris grasped yellow fever and followed the thread of the idea into her experiences navigating the Australian and New Zealand theatre industries as an Asian woman. Because it’s not just white men who have yellow fever—it’s the theatre industry, too.
What does it mean when a choreographer makes a comment about how small your eyes are? When you get billed as ‘Kelly Lim’ instead of ‘Kelly Lim Harris’? When you get asked to fulfil a commercial brief that you’re not comfortable with? Again: Do you love me, or the idea of me?
Having had several confronting experiences in the industry, Harris cleverly frames the show as her response. I deeply appreciated the humour of the number ‘(Please Don’t Tell Me) I’d Be Great in Miss Saigon’. Harris unpacks the dislike of being told she’d only be good in a show for ‘Asians’ while confronting the fact that she’s not exactly in a position to turn down a musical theatre job.
The Western theatre scene is severely lacking in musicals that have anything to do with Asian women, whether they are written by them or star them. The fact that people can list the roles for Asian women whenever I bring this up—oh but there’s Kim in Miss Saigon, what about The King and I?—is exactly my point. Given the talent on display from Harris in her one-woman Fringe Festival show, I’d love to see what full-length mainstage musical she could write if given the chance.
Yellow Fever is such a great example of a Fringe show done well: one performer with a microphone and a stage, small-scale props that each serve a purpose and a costume complete with glitter hairspray.
Rating: Highly recommend
Cabaret: Yellow Fever
Writer/Producer/Performer: Kelly Lim Harris
Runtime: 60 minutes (no interval)
Dates and venue: Trades Hall - Music Room (presented at the Melbourne Fringe Festival) until 18 October 2026 and Ballaraat Mechanics Institute - The Humffray Room from 22 to 24 October 2026