Ashland | Dangerous Common Sense

Vietgone

San Francisco, CA
at the American Conservatory Theater, Strand Theater
Extended through April 29, 2018

Vietgone

by Qui Nguyen
directed by Jaime Castañeda

ACT advertising Vietgone as “The irreverent road-trip comedy” is almost sacrilegious. The categorization misses the depth, power, and cultural importance of this newish play.

Anyone selling Vietgone as a mindless-sounding comedy rode the momentary surface story, ignoring the characters, context, and important human issue that makes Vietgone truly memorable. The strength of Vietgone is its suburb writing which hits the mark in storytelling, characterization, pace, and perspective.

The playwright character (Jomar Tagatac) comes on stage in the opening scene to assure the audience that this show is not about his parents. Then we watch his mother and father flee Vietnam at the fall of Saigon, meet in a refugee camp, and adapt in their own, very different ways.

The excellence of Vietgone is how we learn about the people. Writing too much about the surface narrative would be as bad as passing the play off a “road-trip comedy” in an ad. But, let’s explain the “road trip”.

We meet the hero Quang (James Seol) in Saigon where he is a pilot for the South Vietnamese army. Quang and his sidekick, named only “Asian Guy” (Stephen Hu), fly a helicopter load of desperate people onto an American aircraft carrier as Saigon falls. Quang and Asian Guy think they will return to the mainland to find and evacuate Quang’s wife and children in a quick, follow-on rescue flight. That rescue doesn’t happen, and the men wind up being transported on the carrier to America and being sent to a refugee camp in Arkansas. Once there, Quang meets Tong (Jenelle Chu) and Tong’s mother (Cindy Im). There’s chemistry between Quang and Tong, but he is focused on the family he left behind. After some time Quang and the Asian Guy set out on a motorcycle for Camp Pendleton in California so that Quang can demand to be transported back to Vietnam and reunited with his wife and kids.

The play shifts back and forth in time and location a lot. We see Quang and the Asian Guy on the motorcycle heading from Arkansas to California fairly early in the play, and they have scenes which reflect on their refugee/new to America status. These road-trip moments are revelatory about the characters and about America. They are important, insightful, and often very comedic.

But, the same categorization is true for all of the scenes, not just the ones on the motorcycle. There are tremendously funny, and simultaneously meaningful, moments at the refugee camp and earlier in Vietnam. Vietgone is not a road trip, it’s a people trip.

It’s particularly a refugee trip, a stranger-in-a-strange-land trip, a trip down Prejudice Lane… and not only from the perspective of our heros being discriminated against, but also letting the Vietnamese characters remember their own prejudices.

There are so many flashes of revelation and memory. The characters’ pain of being cut off from their homeland and having to deal with American Supremacy hit me especially hard because of the LGBT refugees and asylum seekers I know from my church’s Guardian Group. The assumption of the wrongness of the US involvement in Vietnam re-immersed me in my high-school/college moral self righteousness. And, the unconscious homogeneity of white America into the 1970’s was striking to recall… and also made extremely funny when the Vietnamese characters talk among themselves about how Americans all think that they are Chinese because Americans think all Asians are Chinese. The kicker is that the Vietnamese characters admit that back home in Saigon they discriminated against people from China and now everyone they meet thinks that they are Chinese themselves.

I am afraid you need to see the play to understand how funny and human this scenario — and the rest of play — are.

The real-life playwright, Nguyen, reportedly loves rap music and fight scenes. He apparently also loves filthy language. These are all things that I generally don’t want to see or hear. Usually I find them cheap devices to appear young or cool, or ways to fill out the two-hours in the theater. Each of them is on target in Vietgone. They make the storytelling more authentic.

The final scene between the playwright and Quan, the helicopter pilot and NOT the playwright’s father, is a worth a trip to the theater on its own. You need the context of the previous two hours’ “road trip”, but the power of this set-in-the-modern-day coda is extreme. If you are close to my age, your college-age moral superiority will be reeling.

Vietgone the play is a complete 5-star, standing ovation, forcing-you-outside-your-comfort-zone, thinking outside-of-the-box piece of art.

ACT’s production is definitely an excellent theater experience. Unfortunately, the director’s and artistic team’s choices made the afternoon less moving than the version we saw in Ashland in 2016 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Here’s why:

Apparently each production develops the musical accompaniment for the rap scenes. At ACT, there is loudish, somewhat melodic music behind the words which distracted from their power. At OSF I don’t remember any music, although I have been assured that it was there. But, in Ashland, the rhythm and cadence of the words ruled, and the scenes were somehow, but definitely, more commanding.
All actors except for those playing Quang and Tong have multiple roles and the flawless switching among the identities made the five-person cast seem much larger in Ashland. But, at ACT it doesn’t work so seamlessly. The first multiple character, Jomar Tagatac as the Playwright, has a distinctive beard. That unique-looking fur reappears in all of his roles, forcing us to willingly suspend our disbelief. If I were the director I would have picked another actor or made Tagatac cut the thing off!
One of my favorite scenes is a fight between the good guys (the Vietnamese) and the bad guys (American bikers). When I saw it originally it was beautifully, humorously, outrageously staged in stylized broadness. It was a wonderful moment of family lore made real in front of you. It was just another one-minute scene at ACT. All the parts and lines were there, but it was sped through. ACT really ran over a show stopping moment.
The actors at ACT were excellent. I especially liked James Seol’s Quang. But, except for Seol, I felt that the Ashland actors were clearly better. More energetic? More involved? Better looking? (I feel cheap saying this, but, yes. At least in a couple cases.)

Overall, ACT’s casting choices, sound design, and directing don’t let Vietgone be as perfect as it was in Ashland. It’s still very, very well worth seeing. But, ACT’s Vietgone is just excellent and not transformative.

Play rating:

By Galen|2018-04-03T10:22:49-07:00April 2, 2018|plays|0 Comments

Henry V

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Henry V

Ensemble as Chorus. Photo by Jenny Graham.

by William Shakespeare
directed by Rosa Joshi

Daniel José Molina (Henry V) and other cast members deliver many truly spectacular moments — especially in Act II — which make this Henry a must see. Unfortunately, Director Rosa Joshi’s choices diminish the impact of the play itself and leaves the audience to appreciate master-class acting set in a confusion of activity.

I think the audience is supposed to [endlessly] appreciate the turmoil and indiscriminate horrors of the machine of war. Toward that end, actors push stacks of boxes across the stage mimicking siege engines or walls or something. In fact, the before play opens members of the cast are twisting a changing pile of boxes around and around upstage. I’m sure it’s meaningful. But, the only thought these leaden-looking props give me is that the director has seen too many Transformer movies.

To add to the disorder, the actors play multiple roles, sometimes up to 6 or 7, if you count “Chorus” and “Ensemble” separately. The differences among the actors’ personas seems deliberately vague as if to remind us how similar to each other all sides in a conflict are. The problem, of course, is that Shakespeare had a plot going, and it was hard for me at times to tell who/which person or which side was doing was doing what. If the actor had a hat on he was an English low-life, without it he might be a French noble. Grrr!

Chaos on Stage: Jessica Ko, Kimberly Scott, Robert Vincent Frank, Shaun Taylor-Corbett. Photo by Jenny Graham.

The effect of the chaos is distraction, not drama. I was horrified to hear the rousing, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” go by like a throw-away line, losing the competition for attention to some random movement, yelling, or flash bang device going off.

Act I starts off well with an interesting delivery of Chorus’ “O for a Muse of fire…” I also appreciated the early court scene where Henry tries to ensure the righteousness of his going to war. Very nice, deliberate acting. But, then the plot becomes secondary to the motion on stage for the remainder of the act, save for one show-stopping moment.

G Valmont Thomas

The actors and audience take a collective breath when Pistol (Kimberly Scott) announces, “Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead.”

Last year’s Falstaff, well known and well liked actor, G. Valmont Thomas, died last December. This Festival season is dedicated to his memory, and many of the Henry V cast worked with him as Falstaff in Henry IV parts 1 and 2. Pistol’s line stopped hearts throughout the theater for it was too true.

Act II cruised along uneventfully until Molina started interacting with individual characters. My daydreaming was first interrupted when Henry confronts his old friend Bardolph, played by Robert Vincent Frank. Bardolph has been caught misbehaving and was brought to his buddy Hal for adjudication. The lines stopped and the two men looked into each other’s eyes, the damning transaction completed wordlessly. Henry follows through with Shakespeare’s narration, but the sentence, appeal, and rejection were all done by the eyes. Both men communicated completely without a sound.

From that scene on, we are treated to excellent vignettes, usually involving Molina. Henry’s wandering in disguise among his troops, picking up their mood, works well. The battle scenes blur but Henry’s humanity away from the overwrought staging is mesmerizing. Even the courtship scene with the French princess (Jessica Ko) gives a tenderness that avoids any disempowering smirk of politics.

As littered with scene gems as Act II is, the power of Shakespeare never reigns. There is always too much activity and too much “who is that again?”

This Henry V showcases Daniel José Molina. His acting has improved from flawed in his first OSF seasons to artistry in this starring role. It’s very worth seeing.

Daniel José Molina as Henry V. OSF photo.

I am glad the director allowed Molina and the other actors time and space to deliver their performances. I just wish she had given Shakespeare and his story the same courtesy.

Play rating:

By Galen|2018-03-05T20:02:55-08:00March 5, 2018|osf, plays|1 Comment

Henry IV, Part One

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Henry IV, Part I :: photo by OSF

Henry IV, Part I
by William Shakespeare

Writing about a performance you saw two months ago gives the “review” a different perspective. I have been slammed and until now unable to spend an hour or so detailing my thoughts of the plays I saw opening weekend. So now I remember only the more important parts of the time I spent in the theater. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it will result in shorter and snappier commentary!

What I don’t clearly remember about Henry IV, I is why I didn’t leave the Thomas Theater a raving fan of the production. I recall that it was a very, very good, solid, and credible experience. But, I didn’t feel I’d experienced a revelation.

Now when I tell others about the evening, I am all praises. Strange?

Daniel Molina (Prince Hal) feels like a genuine rebellious, thoughtless young adult who realistically grows to understand his responsibilities… while at the same time being still willing to shirk his duties late in the play. Molina is more subtle and naturally slackerly than other Prince Hal’s I’ve seen. His Hal is a fit for 2017.

The East Cheap scenes work as real-life happenings and not just as the mandatory comic relief that Shakespeare writes in to amuse us stinkards in the pit. Hal’s playmates are are as genuine-feeling as he is in their self-centered hedonism.

G. Valmont Thomas (Falstaff) is both physical and intricate — a really good job. Michele Mais (Mistress Quickly) is a happy, slutty force of nature, and the other slum dwellers feel like real pranksters gone bad.

I will complain about the blocking in bar scenes. My seat in the corner of first row and a few other seats around the house were too close to the action. The actors would have been fine sitting and drinking where they were, if I hadn’t needed to put my legs somewhere. And, I don’t mean I wanted to stretch my legs out, I just needed to put them on the floor in front of me. As it was, I turned sideways to avoid disaster. I saw the opening show, and I don’t know if the space is still a problem. But, I spent way too much time worrying about whether the scenery was going to roll over my foot or whether I was going to trip a passing actor.

But, back to the good stuff. Jeff King was superb as Henry IV. His simultaneous struggle with — and belief in — Prince Hal were transparent and logical. I felt like I was watching a family and not an important Shakespeare history play. King felt consistent, realistic, and every bit the man who righteously deposed Richard II in the prior chapter of the saga.

I also liked the treatment of the gender-blind casting. I appreciated the switch in nouns when women were cast in key roles. Talking about “your aunt” instead of “uncle” and using “her” instead of “him” just seemed more natural and required one less bit of identification and translation for the audience.

The overall set design was clean and spacious (even if a bit too roomy for the actors and cramped for me). I liked how the action centered in different areas and moved around the room. Costumes, lighting, and other crafts were all good.

Talking about the play now, applauding so many of the pieces, I realize that all the components are excellent. Still, there is no spark that takes you completely out of the moment and shows you something you never realized before.

Maybe at three hours it needed tightening for our Twitter-addicted brains. A few less lines about the battles and bloodlines, maybe snappier delivery, or something.

As it is, Henry IV, Part I is definitely quality and credible. Worth seeing.

Still it’s only .

By Galen|2017-04-23T17:10:02-07:00April 22, 2017|osf, plays|0 Comments

Sweat
Gallery
Sweat

osf, plays

Sweat

Ashland, Oregon
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Sweat
by Lynn Nottage | World Premiere

Jack Willis, Carlo Alban, and K.T. Vogt in “Sweat”.
photo by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Sweat is Lynn Nottage’s brilliant story of people and community in collapse. Before writing this commissioned American Revolutions series play, Nottage talked to residents of America’s poorest city of 2001, Reading, Pennsylvania. Her work shares the residents’ pain, losses, and self-immolation as their good jobs are eliminated in relentless, financially logical, corporate-mandated factory closings and union busting.

I knew the story’s outline coming into the theater. I expected satisfying liberal ranting and raving at the evils of unchecked capitalism. I anticipated heroic, self-sacrificing union people rallying together, and I imaged an uplifting ending engendered by a character or two’s meaningful transformation from floor machinist to educated professional. Or, some other dramatically reasonable redemption that would further Nottage’s growing reputation.

Fortunately, Nottage did not write Sweat with my limited vision. Instead, her approach, plot, and words are extraordinary masterpieces. Her exposition is unconventional, unexpected, and completely involving.

The play’s action occurs in 2008 and in a series of scenes in 2000. We start out seeing key players in 2008, and then Nottage takes us on a chunk-by-chunk visit to the days in 2000 that led to the creation of the 2008 characters. We wind up in modern day (2008) and with the same group of locals from the 2000 neighborhood bar.

The 2000 disruption, drama, and dissolution had been excellently crafted and spectacularly well executed onstage in front of us. The drawing of the characters, the choice of illustrative scenes, and the depth of the language of the eight-year-old scenes were alone striking enough to make Sweat a classic.

Yet, the depth of the individual and collective destruction becomes gasp-inducingly crushing when the audience and characters return to 2008. We understood previously that unpleasant things were happening to our people. But, the time-spaced moments at the play’s conclusion go beyond our earlier intellectual understanding of tragedy and force us to witness and feel the wreckage of minds, souls, and bodies.

Trying more to describe the power Sweat’s writing would be foolish. I’d be in danger of substituting my language for Nottage’s. It just needs to be said that Sweat is an amazing piece of theater based solely on the vivid story and writing.

Then, after giving full credit to the experience to Nottage, we need to add superlative positive descriptions for every other professional contributor of the OSF. Really.

Every actor owned their role. There were no moments when I second guessed the tone or action of any of the people on stage.

The length of my applause for each actor pretty much follows the number of lines they were given to say. Certainly Jack Willis (bartender Stan) had a perfect read on his part from beginning to the very end. Ashland newcomer Tramell Tillman (Chris) used both facial expressions and body movement exceptionally well to accompany his otherwise flawless acting. Of course, any mention of well controlled movement coupled with devastating line delivery needs to lead to a shout out to Terri McMahon. Her drinking buddies Kimberly Scott (Cynthia) and K.T. Vogt (Jessie) also had their own focus-riveting moments, and those women’s work was impeccable.

But, now I want to reorder the positive comments because it’s not fair to leave Carlo Alban (Oscar) until now. He gave a spot-on performance of a role with a lot of onstage downtime coupled with a few critical scenes. And, Tyrone Wilson (Evan)’s probation officer sets up key moments with mouthfuls of exposition. Wilson is skilled getting things said with real and appropriate humanness.

Which unfairly leaves Kevin Kenerly (Brucie) to last. (Please shuffle the order of actor kudos!) Brucie in word and presence is a Cassandra-like warning for the other regulars in the bar. Yet, Kenerly’s straight-forward, strong but low-key portrayal leaves the audience responsible for connecting the dots.

Better than excellent acting, all.

Then there’s the set. Innovative, effective, and richly done. Scenic designer John Lee Beatty created a canvass that let the action move smoothly and quickly and effectively. The scenery, props, and videos (by Jeff Sugg) worked together with comfort and clarity.

With so many facets of Sweat being flat-out wonderful/meaningful/affecting clearly thanks and credit are due to another Ashland newcomer, director Kate Whoriskey. All aspects of the evening are in sync. Whoriskey was part of the Nottage team that worked on the ground in Reading (if I read the Playbill correctly), and her resulting artistic choices made a memorable theatrical event.

This world premier feels like a shaken-out classic. The minor flaws I noticed are not worth mentioning. I am grateful to Oregon Shakespeare festival for their ambitious commissions, to Lynn Nottage for her story, and to the cast and crafts for their artistry.

By Galen|2015-08-27T07:57:54-07:00August 19, 2015|osf, plays|0 Comments