National Asian American Theatre Festival Reviews - Page 2

The Edge of the World
reviewed by Robert Weinstein

The Edge of the World, playing at La MaMa E.T.C. as part of the first National Asian American Theatre Festival, comes from two days' experimentation by Asian Arts Initiative. As explained at the top of the show by director F. Omar Telan, the company developed the show in two days, creating various scenes with the theme of honesty as their sole limitation. It was less important to create the illusions of space and time than it was for the actors to act only as themselves and create pieces reflecting their collective experiences. The result of these explorations is a show consisting of 25 scenes with little or no connective tissue between them. They run from 30 seconds to five minutes, utilize between one and ten actors, and range from the deadly serious to the absurdly ridiculous. Each scene begins with an actor announcing a title followed by the word "Begin" and ends with an actor saying "Scene." Telan and his company handle the material with skill, enthusiasm, and a welcome touch of madness.

The strongest pieces involve audience participation. In "All Trades are Final," two actors enter the audience from the stage armed with two pennies and turn the place into an open market, trading the pennies with audience members for items such as business cards, metro cards, tampons, and money. At one point, a woman tried to trade a stack of dollar bills but the actors had more intriguing currency in mind. In "The Match," a man asked the entire audience to stand up and through a series of questions—"Anyone who still looks at their ex's MySpace page, sit down"—whittled the audience down to find a date ("Please find me in the lobby after the show.") And in the show's most joyous piece, "Three Minutes," two men have three minutes to teach a young woman to play Don Ho's "Tiny Bubbles" on the baritone ukulele. For reasons better seen than described, I don't even remember if they succeeded.

The play's more serious scenes are less successful but some pack moments of quiet power. "Split Ends" starts with one person grooming another person's hair while telling her something about herself and ends with a grooming group of people revealing intimate and startling truths to each other. My favorite scene was the haunting "Rejection," in which a man reacts to several rejection letters (read in voiceover), shredding photocopies of his own headshot. As each letter becomes more personal and reveals the not so poetic motivations fueling his art, the actor walks slowly through the audience and presents the scraps to those he wishes to entertain.

AAI employs a variety of theatrical styles and disciplines in their commitment to "honesty" and "truth," but the show, effectively illustrating the inherent beauty in shared experience, never thoroughly explores the dangers and cruelties that cause us to become isolated from one another. This may be a limitation of their process though, and in no way takes away from the spirit of the evening. The Edge of the World is an incredibly generous piece of theatre.

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Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
reviewed by James Comtois

Through monologues, audio-visual aids, forced sing-a-longs, handouts, and throwing balls of yarn at the audience, Kristina Wong asks in her one-woman-show why so many Asian American women battle with mental illness, depression, and thoughts of suicide. She also asks, more importantly, how she can save them.

It's pretty funny.

You probably wouldn't think it would be. When I first heard that Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was going to be a one-woman show about the high percentage of mental illness among Asian American women, "funny" is not the word that came to mind. But it is. Very much so.

Early in the show, Wong explains that many Asian American performers like putting on shows about stereotypes ("Which is good," she explains dryly, "Because there aren't enough of those.") or about coming to terms with their Asian heritage. So, she's going to carve out a unique niche for herself ("Yes, I know. I'm brave."). This is why she says to someone in the front row: "Stay off my topic. Seriously. Stay off my topic. And more importantly, stay away from my grants."

So, does Wong succeed in getting to the bottom of why so many Asian American women are suicidal? It's difficult to say.

First of all, she doesn't offer any hard evidence that Asian American women are more suicidal than any other ethnic or gender group (or any comparable statistics, for that matter). Is the suicide rate among Asian American women substantially higher than, say, Caucasian men? If so, why? This show doesn't come close to answering that. Also, I didn't get a clear sense as to why she was using this topic, aside from carving out a performance niche for herself.

However, perhaps all that's beside the point. Wong says she believes Asian American women are facing a crisis, and she can't for the life of her figure out how to help. She also points out a mildly depressing yet true point that, even if she can prevent these women from killing themselves, they're all going to die, anyway. After all, isn't preventing someone from committing suicide ultimately postponing the inevitable?

There is one standout section of the show when Wong enacts a story of a depressed woman without health insurance attempting to get a referral for free psychiatric help and getting stuck through a maze of bureaucratic red tape, having to call up the help line and tell her awful story of her painful past over and over again to different people who can't help her. Finally, when she gets put through to the right person who has the power to refer her to some free help, she feels she's being made to audition and sell her sob story to prove Just How Crazy she is.

So, she gives the audience copies of her headshot and resume, with such credits as: "ROLE: Victim—Raped by Chickens." I laughed a lot reading that she was "SAG/AFTRA (ADD Eligible)."

Kristina Wong is a very engaging and dynamic—if not intimidating—performer, completely defying the audience's expectations and using discomfort to evoke laughter. Although the show has trouble keeping its threads together (no pun intended), this type of biting humor is very much up my alley.

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Ramble-Ations: A One D'Lo Show
reviewed by Michael Criscuolo

Ramble-Ations: A One D'Lo Show is a delightful showcase for its star and author, Sri Lankan transgender performer D'Lo. Even though she's American born and was raised on hip-hop in Southern California, she remains steeped in her Sri Lankan heritage. This poses a tricky balancing act for D'Lo. She characterizes her family's homeland as a place that's always forgotten, even by its neighbors. Even though it sits right off the coast of India, Sri Lanka firmly refuses to identify with the mainland. And, perhaps most aggravating of all, she gets mistaken for every other ethnicity—from Ethiopian to Filipino—but her own.

But, D'Lo will not be marginalized, despite the many ways society could dismissively pigeonhole her. This genre-busting dynamo, a gay woman who self-identifies as a man, gives audiences a show that insightfully traces her journey towards who she is today.

Part of that journey includes meeting some of the other people in her life. There's her late sister, who died in a plane crash; her spiritual advisor, who implores the bald D'Lo to grow her hair and dress like a girl; her mother, who has learned to accept her unorthodox daughter as is, but still worries that D'Lo may fall victim to a hate crime ("We didn't leave a war-torn country to move here and get killed"); even the reincarnated Gandhi, who sips from a flask while dropping pearls of wisdom.

Most interesting, though, is D'Lo's first-hand account of discovering her sexuality and forging her own place in the world. Her family, thankfully, is presented as quizzically supportive, so she never has that hurtle to jump over. For D'Lo, the struggle for self is internal. Who does she want to be? And how far in which direction does she want to go? She also has a bit of a spiritual crisis as she acknowledges the existence of a higher power, but admits that she doesn't feel it in her soul.

There are many fine moments in Ramble-Ations: her humorous account of being "a dutiful son" to her parents; the inspiration she draws from seeing an unshaven transgender man dressed as a woman on the subway; and video footage of her mother imitating some of the bling-wearing denizens on BET. Throughout, D'Lo displays impressive versatility as she jumps from role to role.

Even at 75 minutes, though, Ramble-Ations errs a bit on the long side. The script as a whole could use a little more focus, and D'Lo's overall presentation could use some judicious tightening. But, there's no denying that she is a warm and talented performer. Her apex comes near the show's conclusion when she answers the question on everyone's mind: does she physically want to become a man? While it would be nice to have a deeper voice and a more masculine appearance, she admits that she is content as is. While in the middle of disrobing for another character transformation, she confesses to us, "I keep this body for the theatre...This stage holds me up like only a woman can." Amen to that.

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Falsettoland
reviewed by Martin Denton

National Asian American Theatre Company's revival of William Finn & James Lapine's musical Falsettoland is a triumph in every way. This show—so groundbreaking when it was seen on Broadway 15 years ago—still has the ability to pack a significant emotional wallop. This production, elegantly directed by Alan Muraoka with superb music direction by W. Brent Sawyer, reminds us that times of crisis can bring out the very best in people, pulling them together to provide unconditional support and love.

The story, which is a sequel to Finn's March of the Falsettos, concerns Marvin, who left his wife Trina and son Jason for a man, Whizzer; Marvin and Whizzer subsequently broke up and as Falsettoland begins, he is living alone, very focused (as is Trina) on Jason's upcoming bar mitzvah. (Trina has re-married, to Marvin's former psychiatrist, Mendel.)

At one of Jason's baseball games, Marvin and Whizzer reunite and, finding the old spark still very much alive, they get back together. But it's not long before Whizzer starts to show signs of a mysterious illness (the show is set in the early 1980s) that we can identify as AIDS. "Something very bad is happening," sings Marvin's neighbor, a doctor named Charlotte, "Something that kills / Something contagious / Something that spreads from one man to another."

Whizzer's disease brings perspective to the denizens of Falsettoland: Marvin's squabbles with Trina over the bar mitzvah arrangements suddenly seem unimportant. Finally, the show is more about the strengthening of a makeshift, unorthodox family unit than it is about the tragic end of a romance. Trina, who really is our guide into this show, as well as its conscience, tells us "I'm trying to keep sane as the rules keep changing / Families aren't what they were." Her song continues

I hold to the ground as the ground keeps shifting
Keeping my balance square
Trying not to care about this man who Marvin loves
But that's my life
He shared my life
Yes that's my life

The final scenes of the show, brilliantly staged by Muraoka (who solves a problem with the ending that Finn and Lapine never managed in the original), remind us that acceptance and compassion are paramount in coping with a world that keeps shifting under our feet.

NAATCO has brought together an outstanding ensemble, led by Jason Ma's heartfelt and beautifully sung Marvin. Francis Jue is likably avuncular as Mendel, while Christine Toy Johnson and MaryAnn Hu are fine as Dr. Charlotte and her kosher-caterer partner, Cordelia. 13-year-old Ben Wu is perfectly unaffected and real as Jason. But the standouts here are Manu Narayan, as a sexy, frisky, warm-hearted Whizzer, and Ann Sanders as Trina, whose smart, compassionate performance moves her character from the story's sidelines firmly to its emotional center.

Scenic elements by Sarah Lambert are simple but enormously effective (they consist, mostly, of seven chairs, each one upholstered in one of the colors of the gay pride rainbow flag); costumes (Ron Glow) and lighting (Stephen Petrilli) also serve the production splendidly.

Falsettoland is about taking care of each other in troubling times, and NAATCO's revival ups the ante by reminding us that "each other" really means everybody: seven actors of Asian descent play seven neurotic urban Jews without comment and it's neither jarring nor politically pointed. Mendel sings at the show's end: "Homosexuals / Women with children / Short insomniacs / We're a teeny tiny band." This production stands as tribute to the notion that we're all in this together.

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The Female Heart
reviewed by Pete Boisvert

Linda Faigao-Hall's The FeMale Heart begins in the Smokey Mountains of Manila, a 170 acre garbage mound in which nearly 30,000 people scrape together a meager life. Anghel and his mother Rosario make ends meet by gathering and reselling scrap metal and other useful trash from the refuse that surrounds them. Anghel's sister Adelfa is one of the few teenagers in Smoky Mountain who is able to attend high school.

Upon hearing Adelfa's valedictory speech, Anghel convinces her to continue with her education in college. He tells her he will be able to pay for her tuition by taking a job as a D.I., or dance instructor, at a fancy hotel. In reality, he is actually earning the money for Adelpha's schooling by working as a "macho dancer" or prostitute in Manila's red light district.

When Anghel falls ill as a result of the sex work, Adelfa must place a listing in a catalogue of mail order brides in an attempt to secure the money needed to pay for Anghel's medical care. She strikes up a correspondence with Roger, a real estate broker with anger management issues living in Brooklyn, and arranges to marry him on the condition that he sends $300 a month to Rosario and Anghel to pay for her brother's treatment in a private facility. Initially Adelfa sees the trade as a fair one, but as she is confronted with Roger's anger and violence, the deal she made to save her brother turns sour.

Rona Figueroa is stunning as Adelfa, bringing a fully realized, emotionally centered character to life. Adelfa's attitude toward Roger evolves in the second half of the play as his treatment of her grows harsher, and Figueroa handles the nuances of this change with great skill. Victor Lirio brings charm and tenacity to the role of Anghel.

Initially Bing Magtoto's Rosario comes off a bit flat, but as we watch her correspond with her daughter and care for her son in later scenes, her performance reveals hidden nuances to the character. The role of Roger could easily have been played as a simple monster, but Tim Davis brings a great deal of self-awareness and depth to the part.

Jamie Richards directs the play with a soft hand, allowing the subtleties of the characters to emerge with naturalness and ease. The action moves forward and backward in time, and Richards skillfully handles these transitions; the production holds the audience rapt throughout the densely-packed 70 minute performance.

Maruti Evans's scenic and lighting designs suit the play perfectly. Despite the numerous locations represented in the script, Evans's unit set, centered around Roger's Brooklyn apartment, is remarkably flexible. Once Adelpha moves to Brooklyn to marry Roger, we see glimpses of Rosario and Anghel's lives through a scrim painted with an image of Smokey Mountain, which forms the rear wall of Roger's apartment.

Faigao-Hall's central theme here is self-sacrifice for the salvation of the ones you love. Repeatedly the characters assume each others' burdens, while in the process putting their own hopes and dreams in escrow. This willingness to put others before oneself is seen as a virtue, evidence of pusong babae, the gentle, compassionate female heart. Faigao-Hall never shies away from the difficult moral questions her topic raises, which ultimately is the true strength of the play.

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The Spoken World
reviewed by Martin Denton

The Spoken World comes to the National Asian American Theater Festival from the Bay Area (San Francisco/Oakland). It's a program of two works-in-progress by young spoken word artists, presented by The Living Word Project, which is the resident theater company of Youth Speaks, Inc. The first segment of The Spoken World is a solo piece by Michelle "Mush" Lee, a spoken-word poet who adds movement and choreography to her slam-style performance. What's on view here is a 20-minute collage of pieces about women and women's issues. Most of the ground covered is familiar: eating disorders, low self-esteem and poor self-image, sex and sexuality. Some of the material addresses Mush's experience as a first-generation Korean American, but the pieces that deal with her mother feel like Margaret Cho retreads, lacking warmth or any personal quality. Overall, Mush is an engaging and energetic (and new!) performer. To my mind, in her writing she should guard against easy, cheap laughs and probe her own experiences more deeply as she continues to shape this show.

The second, longer section of The Spoken World is hip-hop/spoken-word-style sketch comedy from the collective iLL-Literacy, which consists of Adriel Luis, Dahlak Brathwaite, Nico Cary, and Ruby Veridiano-Ching. Brathwaite and Luis are enormously accomplished, engaging performers (Cary and Veridiano-Ching come across as less assured, and both seemed to be swallowing words at the performance reviewed, making them sometimes difficult to understand). All deliver material that is generally sharp and timely; a piece about the latter-day political activists on the Berkeley campus is particularly pointed, as is a riff on the appropriation of the word "nigger" by young white hip-hop/rap wannabe types. Some of the pieces are a little self-indulgent (and almost all could bear a bit of paring down). One of the final sketches, about the pitfalls of text messaging, has almost no bite whatsoever.

But there's lots of talent here, and smarts; this kind of show is not particularly my cup of tea (nor am I anywhere near the target demographic, in terms of age), and I'd have liked it better without the constant requests for applause and approval (the performers begin almost every segment with a bid for the audience to "make some noise!"). But I have great admiration for these writer/performers, who really are tackling relevant, socially conscious themes and are especially working to break down barriers for people of color. Like their NYC peers in Slanguage, the folks in iLL-Literacy herald a new inclusiveness that's irresistable.

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Parang Sabil
reviewed by Martin Denton

In school I learned that the United States "acquired" the Philippines after the Spanish-American War in 1898. And that's about all I remember being taught on that subject; I'll bet I have that in common with most Americans.

Kinding Sindaw's powerful new theatre piece Parang Sabil remedies my lack of education about the American occupation of the Philippines. It's a lesson in history and the collision of cultures that needs to be on everyone's agenda.

Two narratives are skillfully interwoven here. One is a retelling of a kissa (legendary ballad) from the Tausug tradition about a Prince who becomes betrothed to the Sultan's daughter just as occupying soldiers from the West arrive on their island (according to the program notes, this legend was "retold in different periods of occupation, with different antagonists—the Spanish in the 18th and 19th centuries, then the American army in the early 20th century"). The other is a stark tale of conquest, recounted in the words of contemporary observer Mark Twain. The Americans, under General Leonard Wood, were supposedly on a mission of "benevolent assimilation" to Christianize the Filipino "savages" (who were, in fact, Muslims). But the only word Twain can find to describe what actually happened is a terrible one: slaughter.

Under the direction of Potri Ranka Manis, who conceived and choreographed Parang Sabil and also stars in it, Kinding Sindaw tell these two stories in movement and song, with interspersed narration by Twain (portrayed masterfully by Ken Schatz) and an onstage storyteller, Onawumi Jean Moss. The movement is based on traditional Filipino dances (the program notes provide vivid and fascinating background) and is performed by an ensemble of 20. The music is wondrous, played on a variety of traditional percussion instruments; the lead musician, Nurnonilon V. Queano Ph.D., displays remarkable versatility as he moves among them, effortlessly and dexterously.

The juxtaposition of stories and styles—Filipino religious rituals and chants contrasted with soldiers on parade or singing rowdy camp songs, for example—is enormously effective. One of the main strategies of this piece is to present to American audiences a picture of Filipino life before the occupation: a world that's strange and unfamiliar to us, untranslated and unannotated, for us to appreciate and recognize though not completely understand. 100 years ago Americans thought nothing of destroying such a culture. Can such a thing still be true?

The climax of the piece, depicting the massacre of some of the Tausugs, is awful and edifying: a shameful moment in our history that has largely been hidden from us. Kinding Sindaw, in reclaiming that history and presenting it with such grace and intelligence in this unique and enlightening show, does us all a great service in Parang Sabil.

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Guns & Tampons / Living Memory-Living Absence
reviewed by Mark DeFrancis

Every seat gets a tampon. Sitting in a theatre packed with women and menstruation paraphernalia amongst maybe two other guys who look as scared as I do, I was tempted to think this was going be one of "those shows" about feminine things I could never hope to fathom. Not True. Hanalei Ramos brings together a fascinating collection of stories taken from diaries, interviews, and other documentation focusing on women in cases of objectification, degradation, and violence both emotional and physical which is as entertaining as it is enlightening and as uplifting as it is disturbing.

Guns and Tampons is a performance of various monologues. Some are tragic stories of abuse and rape while others are light and have a humorous tone to them. The greatest strength of these accounts is that they not only explore the motives behind the abusers but also the shame and self-degradation which woman in these situations impose upon themselves. Between these stories Ramos engages in several performance pieces that emphasize togetherness and sisterhood within the audience, which seems to be at the heart of her philosophy towards dealing with gender abuse. The show also features audience interaction and education (I am now skilled in the basic operation of a tampon for example) which adds fun to a show which could otherwise have been very depressing.

Ramos has fashioned a provocative performance piece and shows a talent for communicating a difficult message. She does, however, lack the polish of a stage actor and could stand to spend more time preparing her monologues to get the most of their provocative characters and tones (with the exception of her strong closing piece). Still, if a show where you throw a tampon at a stage can make a "guy's guy" such as myself feel moved and intrigued, then Hanalei Ramos is clearly in the right profession and I look forward to her future work.

Anida Yoeu Ali's movement and media collage entitled Living Memory/Living Absence is a bold and visceral work about the author's quest to reconnect with her fractured Cambodian roots while engaging the horrid legacy of the Khmer Rouge upon her people. Her explorations take the audience through a twisted series of emotions in search of the Apsara, or "heavenly nymphs," which exist as a force within all people.

The piece is free in form and Ali's movements are well suited to each scene of the work. She evokes delicacy, grace, power, and even horror with ease. In the standout scene of this show, she creates a terrifying image of the suffering and anger of human atrocity by contorting her physique into twisted forms. Her talent aids in her storytelling as she can make concepts like loss, despair, and loneliness appear clearly with just her physicality. Her presence as a speaker is lacking though. The poetry she recites is entirely unnecessary at times and begs the question as to why she would distract from such engrossing movement work.

She is however upstaged at many moments by some of the finest light and video design I have ever seen in any theatrical production. Video artist Masahiro Sugano and light designers Yasmeen Shorish and Giau Troung put together a series of images, which are guaranteed to never leave my mind. The video and animation act in concert with Ali's choices and often evoke strong kinesthetic reactions in the audience. A pumping heart made from barbed wire will remain my favorite image of this performance.

This piece is unfortunately plagued by several false endings, which occur at the end of powerful scenes in the first half of the work. Somehow, at about 45 minutes, the show is simply too long and taxes the audience with its relentlessly slow pace. The best moments are in the early going and rob the work of any climax or cathartic finale. Still, there is so much power and passion in Anida Yoeu Ali's performance and production that some simple rearranging would make this show a must-see event.

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Cooking Con Karimi
reviewed by Kat Chamberlain

What is a reviewer to do when, shortly into the show you are there to review, the actors pick you to come up on stage, and receive a "Proletariat Employee of the Year Award"?

Well, you cheerfully become part of the show, of course!

It happened to me at Cooking Con Karimi (Con Castro), a show that offers live cooking, interactive theatre, song and dance, poetry reading, as well as brazen political activism, with audience howling and clapping throughout. I was not the only one invited onto the stage—in fact the entire audience is, food in hand while being filmed for Public Access television.

Such is the adventure served up by Robert Farid Karimi and John Manal Castro, playing Mero Cocinero Karimi and Comrade Cocinero Castro, respectively. But the fun is just the dessert. The main course is politics. Quite simply, these two talented actors and chefs want nothing short of a revolution. With the set adorned with signs and posters reminiscent of those at a peace rally, and buttons all over Mero's apron that declare "U$A—The best election money can buy" and "Support the Police—Beat yourself up!", the stirring ideas fill the theatre just as quickly and surely as does the aroma of sautéed onions and crushed mint.

These chefs want people—and that seems to be one of their favorite words, the other being, not surprisingly, comrade—to "eat slow, with someone you love, and make a new friend.""Revolution starts in the kitchen," says Mero. He believes that we can counteract the "indigestion" caused by the current war in Iraq and other injustices with choices and changes we make in our homes, at the grocery store, and across the table from one another.

Food naturally (and organically) takes center stage, with three appetizers whipped up in front of the audience and sampled by all. There are other surprises best left to your own discovery, but be sure to come hungry, not merely for physical nourishment but for metaphors and stories that add flavor and political messages that give bite, every cooking step of the way.

The highlight of the show for me is the songs. After Mero's outrage over the appearance of Spam in their kitchen, and its dark past argued over, the "Spam Song" is sung to, well, a can of Spam. "You've got a place to go," croons Comrade Castro, his hand lovingly rubbing his belly. It almost turned me into a Spam fan. Well, almost.

Karimi has a charisma that could turn any politician green with envy. Castro, a professionally trained chef, hits the bulls eye in the joke department with his deadpan delivery. This dynamic duo co-produced and wrote the entire show that has apparently gained much popularity in the Midwest before coming to the Big Apple for the first time. The format and pacing may be a little rough around the edges, but that might be by design, creating a personable, common-man feel and indeed, a sense of comradeship.

So what type of theatre is Cooking Con Karimi (Con Castro) exactly? I think Mero would be the first to protest any attempt at genre defining. Diversity is the key ingredient on his stage, and mixing the prominent action. In the end it is an experience very much like enjoying a delectable meal with good friends—you are thrilled while immersed in it, and it is always, always too short.

And I swear that I am not saying that just because I received a beautiful wooden spoon for my "Award"!

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Lee/Gendary
reviewed by Michael Criscuolo

Yin and Yang battle it out for control of martial arts legend Bruce Lee's soul in Soomi Kim and Derek Nguyen's excellent new play, Lee/gendary. Set inside the action movie superstar's mind, Lee/gendary takes the audience on a hallucinatory trek through its namesake's short but fast life as he tries to find a harmonious balance between fame and enlightenment (i.e., Yin and Yang). It's a fascinating journey that is punctuated in director Suzi Takahashi's production by a dynamic performance by Kim as Bruce Lee.

Wait a minute: a woman plays Bruce Lee? Oh, you betcha. And, let me tell you: she kicks ass (if you'll pardon my French).

Lee/gendary traces Lee's beginnings as a proverbial 98-pound weakling all the way through to his international stardom, with all the requisite trials and tribulations along the way. Partially raised by his parents as a girl—he was given a girl's name at birth (Sai Fung, which means "small phoenix"), and had a pierced ear in his youth—Lee overcame peer pressure and school bullies by learning martial arts and becoming a skilled combatant. He then embarked on an iconic crossover acting career that encompassed American television (The Green Hornet) and global film stardom (Enter the Dragon). He also became a poster child for ideal physical fitness, invented his own martial arts system, and trained high profile celebrities like Steve McQueen and James Coburn.

But, Lee had his share of troubles. Even though he was a dedicated family man, there were rumors of a longtime extra-marital affair with Taiwanese actress Betty Ting Pei as well as drub abuse. Lee/gendary addresses it all with style and panache.

Kim and Nguyen piece the show together through a tapestry of dance, movement, found and scripted text, and combat. There's a canny reenactment of Lee's television interview with Canadian broadcaster Pierre Berton in which the star smoothly expresses his desire to have it all. Later in the play, Lee surprisingly tells the audience that he will always stay by his wife's side, but that Betty Ting Pei "will always be the one who makes me feel like a man." The creators also make Lee's Yin and Yang characters in the play who vie for the protagonist's attention throughout. Lee/gendary culminates in a spectacular fight scene in which Lee must battle one of them—and, in essence, himself—quite literally to the death.

The fights themselves are quite impressive, as the company has reconstructed them straight from Lee's movies. Takahashi adds a splendid humorous element by making the cast lip-synch to the dialogue and music soundtrack from the films themselves. Highlights include Lee's single-handed thrashing of a group of thugs from The Chinese Connection, and his infamous battle royale with Kareem Abdul-Jabaar from Game of Death.

Then, there is Kim, who is outstanding as Lee. Hers is a convincing performance of rigorous physicality and impressive commitment. She scores big points in the case for non-traditional gender casting by showing that the key to such successes lies in having the right attitude. Oh boy, does she have the attitude! As Lee himself says early in the play, "Champions are made from something inside them." Kim's performance proves that.

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From the Heart / On The Island
reviewed by Natalie Pero

On the Island and From the Heart provide the complete theatre experience in one night. Both of these one-woman shows provide the apples and oranges necessary for a nice evening treat. They tell stories that illuminate various plights of Asians in a universal vocabulary that would chill any audience member. Both are written by their performers, which lends an ownership to both the performance and the message. I was politically and emotionally satisfied after the evening.

The night opens with On the Island, a piece centered around a prisoner without trial. The tone is set immediately by a curious blue curtain hanging from the ceiling like a waterfall. S.T. Shimi opens with a stunning and unexpected movement piece, including an aerial dance with the curtain. Her grace in the air and on the ground coupled with stunning lighting by Billy Munoz tells an entire story through poignant images and thrilling acrobatics. The music and text are at times abrupt, but always with purpose. I would be interested to see a silent interpretation of the piece and the effect of silence on Shimi's message.

From the Heart is without a doubt the orange of the evening treat. Jude Narita peels away at five Asian and Asian-American life experiences. Each story has a different tone, style, and costume, but all of them made me laugh out loud and a few made me cry. Narita had me questioning and answering and questioning again. In contrast to her fellow performance, her set is simple: just her, center stage. Narita is truly captivating. I admire theatre that can keep an audience thinking even after the performance and in days to come. I know I am still questioning and discovering things about Narita's piece and I am sure my fellow audience is in the same boat.

The conceptual differences in the pieces provide a dynamic experience. But what brings it all together is the universal message told. Both women use subtle humor and painful reality to set a mood and encouragingly challenge the audience. Not only would I recommend this theatre treat, I already have.

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And
reviewed by Michael Criscuolo

On the night I saw And, Marcus Young's beautiful new performance piece, I made my stage debut at the Flea Theater. So did everyone else in the audience, for that matter. That's the kind of show And is. At its simplest level, And engages in full-on audience participation. But, Young's exquisite study of the nature of performance itself is also much, much more.

The show starts simply enough with Young entering a bare stage, standing before us, and touching his nose. After a moment, he asks the audience to please touch their noses. Thus begins a series of such requests, as Young and the audience touch their mouths, nipples, knees, and ponder the floorboards, the wall, and the power cords.

Then, he says, "Watch this space while I sit with you." And he takes a seat in the audience while we ponder the space.

After that, he pulls one person on stage, then a second. After they stand together for a moment, Young turns to the audience and says, "Please; let's watch," and sits in the audience again as we take in the two new stars of the show. Then, Young is off to get them some chairs: "Please continue. I'll be back."

From there, Young slowly lures the audience on stage one by one. Actually, I shouldn't say "lures," since the crowd at the performance I attended was all too willing to get up there (myself included). Young starts whispering secret messages to each of us (none of which I will divulge here), and pretty soon And is happening all over the theatre: on stage, in the audience, everywhere. I won't spoil what happens next, but I can tell you this much: I have never seen anything like And, and I guarantee you haven't either.

In one sense, Young takes the words of Peter Brook very much to heart: all he needs to make a piece of theatre is an empty space, a chair or two, and someone to watch it. But, he challenges the idea of what a performance is by getting the audience so heavily involved. Is he the show, or are we? Is the show happening on stage or in the stands? That depends on your perspective, and also on how much of the audience is on stage by the time you ask yourself that question.

And is taken to another level by Young's otherworldly presence. Seeming to glide on air throughout, he calmly pushes the aesthetic and thematic envelopes with commanding ease and authority. Like And itself, Young is completely unpredictable: the audience has no idea what he'll do next, but knows it's in good hands. His confident control makes everyone feel safe and at ease.

It also transforms And into the theatrical equivalent of meditation or a yoga class. As Young guides the audience on contemplations of a glass of water, the moon in the sky, or some other faraway place, viewers may find themselves pondering the meaning of And itself (I know I did). Like meditation or yoga, one will ultimately get out of this show whatever they want or need (or what they put into it). What I got out of it was the larger sense of how big a part the audience plays in the performance of any given show: their engagement is crucial to its success or failure. Also, that there is no real difference between actor and audience. One is just as interesting to watch as the other. We are all special, while simultaneously none of us is special. Just equal.

And is a unique happening that makes time stand still. I'm not even going to tell you how long the show actually is. It feels like it could be 15 minutes or two hours. Or somewhere in between. Or neither. Go see for yourself.

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