As part of my subscription to Thick House Theater, I received a ticket to Fayette-Nam, the Asian American Theater Company’s world premiere of Aurorae Khoo’s play; I was a little wary going in, but I found it a rich and enjoyable evening.
I was a little wary because I loathe ethnic uplift and groupthink and I hate theater that’s all about cardboard figures representing different groups shouting slogans at each other, and those are the kinds of the things I expect from any theater group that's ethnic-specific, and the summary – an African-American soldier goes AWOL before being shipped out to Iraq and hides out with an Asian-American woman and her daughter, with whom he is in a love triangle; the mother runs a donut shop and dreams of Paris and the daughter is a pyromaniac – just sounded a little too self-consciously quirky for my taste.
The synopsis oversimplifies the subtle and complex interplay among the characters. Khoo expertly conveys a sense of Fayetteville, a waystation for soldiers that sustains a tense and fragile community of service industries (mostly cheap restaurants and strip joints). The family unit is also tense and fragile and surprisingly enduring.
Laura-Lai Lee, the mother (played by Lisa Kang), and her children, Debbie Lee and Connor Lee (Kathleen Mendoza and Kenneth Tan Ronquillo, respectively), all dream of getting away but also know that, given reality, they aren’t really going anywhere. Debbie has been booted from Columbia University because of an arson incident (the details of which are slowly revealed, and which increase the complexity of what could have been a one-dimensional character; Debbie isn’t as bold and different as she likes to pretend). Connor is a teenage boy who is trying to break away from his mother and sister; he wants to join the football team but ends up as equipment manager, not being athletic or popular enough for the squad.
Laura-Lai envisions herself in what is very much a tourist’s fantasy of Paris – the Eiffel Tower, baguettes, the Champs-Elysees, l’amour! – but is stuck in her donut and eggroll shop, the Hole and Roll. It’s easy to see why the young black soldier, Jerome Dupree (played by Jon Gentry), already far from his home in Oakland, missing his grandmother and longing to escape the strippers and his boasting buddies for an authentic connection, is drawn to this woman as well as her daughter.
Race and gender stereotypes do surface, but in an almost casual way that comes from character and situation, not ideological need (though I was a little dubious that Laura-Lai would really describe her former husband as like a pound cake, yellow on the outside and white on the inside – this woman fantasizes about Paris, and the man she’s been seeing, a retired officer known as the Major, whom she fears losing, is white, so being Chinese just hasn’t seemed that important to her). I think the script could use a little tightening; we go to Paris or hear people described in food terms maybe once too often, but the play doesn't lapse into the predictable and I was never bored. Credit should go to the playwright, and also to the director, Duy Nguyen (the AATC’s Co-Artistic Director), as well as the talented cast.
You have a few more chances to catch the show, which is scheduled to close July 11. Click here for more information or tickets, and here to see the YouTube video.
No comments:
Post a Comment