Surface Tensions
KANFER, ETHAN
On Stage Surface Tensions By Ethan Kanfer Two new dramas and a musical revival turn their attention to plumbing our prejudices. In different ways all three feature characters whose...
...Not only will everyone be there, they will be there in bathing suits...
...Aunt Ester can purge him of his agony, but first she sends him on a few fool's errands...
...In time the assassins organize, intending to push the foreigners back into the sea...
...Not all the Japanese embrace the change...
...Constanza Romero's costumes and David Gallo's set ably evoke the period, and simultaneously create an air of mystery...
...As she says several times throughout the play...
...But in private, Tom has difficulty moving the relationship forward...
...The play begins in a busy Manhattan eatery, where oversized Helen (Ashlie Atkinson) is enjoying a sizable lunch...
...The arresting officer at the scene was Black Mary's belligerent brother Caesar (Ruben Santiago-Hudson...
...Before the big day...
...Soon Westerners take up residence in Japan...
...Tom brushes Carter off...
...We share Helen's impatience because we are rubbed raw by the repetition of Carter's one-note cynicism and Tom's petulant passivity...
...Ultimately, it is her humanity that gives the lie to the superficiality of our times...
...The ending's resonance is largely due to the setup...
...Tom (Steven Pasquale), ahandsome, trim yuppie, asks to use the counter space next to her and they begin to chat...
...Bad boy playwright Neil LaBute wastes no time trying to shake us up...
...But there are no stakes for him...
...The finale has the entire cast assembled under flashing disco lights, dressed like Tokyo club kids and spouting such slogans as "The Toyota Camry is the best selling car in Detroit...
...After the meeting, the structure is disassembled and burned...
...The Americans are led from the docks to a hastily constructed wooden treaty house where every courtesy is extended...
...None of this is lost on Citizen Barlow, who must decide what "doing the right thing" means for him...
...For what makes Gem sparkle is not its plot but its symphony of voices...
...The closest thing we get to a protagonist is Kayama (Michael K. Lee), a former warrior who wishes to spend the rest of his days fishing quietly in the country with his wife Tamate (Yoko Fumoto...
...Suddenly he bursts with visceral energy, eerily reflecting the bewilderment and excruciation of a captive slave...
...A more complex (and mature) treatment of American history can be found in Gem of the Ocean, the latest installment of August Wilson's cycle of plays...
...Although he and Helen are happy together, she knows there must be some reason why she never meets his friends...
...Citizen's catharsis is hardly the end of this multifaceted drama...
...Dictatorial Emperor Meiji (B.D...
...In the song "Someone in a Tree," they recall hearing the clinking of glasses, a few raised voices, but nothing of substance...
...As in Fiddler, too, it is clear from the outset that the theme of the story will be the sundering of social fabric in the face of changing times...
...And LaBute desen es credit for creating a rare leading role for a heavy actress...
...Before long he finds himself asking her for a date...
...Like Eugene O'Neill, Wilson is a writer of arias...
...Ostensibly about the difficulty of love in today's hollow moral climate, it is also a comic critique of a corporate culture that devours its young...
...Moreover, the apparent objective of the well researched book is to unfold history, not hammer home its lessons...
...Even his table talk is abrasive...
...He is aided by Dan Moses Schreier's sound design and Donald Holder's potent lighting effects...
...Jeannie and Tom have had a fling, and she complains that he has been giving her mixed signals...
...TomkeepsCarterat bay, but is less successful in fending off the attacks of Jeannie from accounting (Keri Russell...
...Oddly, the actual Kanagawa Treaty meeting, seemingly a pivotal event, is not shown...
...Carter ruthlessly exploits the situation, e-mailing a purloined picture of Helen to all the desktops in the office...
...Translation: Your girlfriend should look as good on you as your suit, otherwise bye-bye career ladder...
...Rather than facejustice, the accused man, who proclaimed his innocence, drowned himself...
...Yet it is against custom for Westerners to set foot on the sacred soil of Japan...
...Director Jo Bonney cannily makes the café a standup establishment, allowing Atkinson and Pasquale to face the audience while talking to each other...
...In his youth he frequently operated outside the law, both as an escaped slave and an organizer in the famed Underground Railroad...
...The device may be intended to give us a glimpse of the gaijin (foreigner) through startled Japanese eyes...
...In Atkinson and Pasquale's hands, the conclusion feels triumphant...
...She is right...
...But the men are there for food and conversation as well...
...The sailors of the S.S...
...He believes morality is an individual matter, especially in a society whose rules are racist and unjust...
...Tom agrees to bring Helen to the company beach party...
...Sondheim's score, aided by musical director Paul Gemignani, seethes with a tension and lyricism that triumph over Miyamoto's heavy-handedness...
...Solly disagrees...
...He discards the firearm, the two draw swords, and Kayama is killed...
...It is a redundant and insulting ending...
...His inevitable acceptance of the new order is masterfully portrayed by Lee in the ballad "A Bowler Hat...
...Some trends of the '70s have deservedly fallen by the wayside...
...Like the Americans, the Europeans are stereotypes...
...He thus has spent much of his career unearthing that past, and in Gem of the Ocean, at the Walter Kerr Theater, he shows us a young protagonist who cannot move forward until he understands the experiences of his ancestors...
...Nevertheless, sitting with Helen on the beach, he senses that something is decidedly wrong...
...Jeannie melts down...
...He can remain in the Hill district and pursue his attraction to Black Mary, or he can travel south to complete a mission on Solly's behalf...
...Unable to repel the unwelcome visitors, Kayama hatches an ingenious plan...
...Wilson once said in an interview, "My generation of blacks knew very little about the past of our parents...
...Tom finally fights back...
...In particular, America's reflection in the international mirror had lost its rosy hue and the doctrine of imperialism aroused the ire of a rising generation of writers...
...It's a major step...
...McCarthy brings a frighteningly comic icy rage to his portrayal of Carter...
...This is why he balks...
...The title of his latest effort, playing at the OffBroadway Lucille Lortel Theater, is Fat Pig...
...Tom stammers and lies, but is eventually outed...
...At least Pacific Overtures delivers what its title advertises...
...Kayama returns home to find that his beloved Tamate has committed seppuku (ritual suicide) rather than face the barbarian invasion...
...he wants to empower Japan by aping the industrialized West...
...The Americans come back, followed by the English, Dutch, Russians, and French...
...In a dizzying fast forward, the song "Next" takes us all the way from the late 19th century to the Japan of today...
...Carter (Andrew McCarthy), who purports to be Tom's best friend, never seems to have anything to do except spend his time lounging on Tom's couch while provoking him with embarrassing questions and lacerating quips...
...As he struts around displaying his shiny badge, it is clear that he enjoys ruffling other people's feathers...
...Tom and Helen's scenes, though, are moving, funny and genuine...
...In the mid-1970s, the impact of Watergate, Vietnam and political assassinations gave rise to a spate of dark, discomfiting works of popular art...
...Helen may continue to have a hard time because of her weight, but not as hard as the rest of these self-hating stick figures...
...In the second act, Citizen confesses that he was the one who stole the nails in an effort to get back at the mill management for its mistreatment of the workers...
...Heavily armed American ships are docked in Edo harbor, demanding an audience with the Shogun...
...First produced in 1976 (not coincidentally America's bicentennial year), the collaboration between playwright John Weidman and composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim ran for 196 performances and failed to recoup its investment...
...If this sounds too sweet coming from LaBute, fear not...
...He never imagined another man would die for his crime...
...Perhaps LaBute means Tom and Helen to be seen as a modern Romeo and Juliet, a star-crossed couple whose love cannot flourish in this wicked world...
...The prequel is a welcome addition to Wilson's saga, even though taken on its own it leaves some narrative threads hanging...
...The irony is that the monarch does not wish to return to the old ways...
...In different ways all three feature characters whose destinies are determined by their size, color or shape...
...In sum, the good news is that the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist is still at the peak of his powers...
...As antithetical as their views may seem, Solly and Caesar have one thing in common...
...It is a glorified one-act play, padded with clever yet static diatribes...
...The show's most dramatic scene occurs when one of the black-clad killers is revealed to be Manjiro, Kayama's former aide...
...In the face of Helen's demand for honesty, he must either pursue the relationship or let her go...
...This is a house with secrets...
...Still, its innovative use of an all-Asian cast and Japanese musical motifs made Broadway history, and its subject matter remains ripe for reinterpretation...
...Once he surrenders to her authority, he is ready to go on an internal voyage...
...He's difficult to like, but underneath his bravado lies a cogent philosophy: If African-Americans are to achieve true equality, the community must be law-abiding, work diligently, and shun those who pander to addiction...
...Both consider freedom a work in progress...
...Once he discards his pretensions, he can only be himself...
...Instead, it comes across as reverse racism, a relic of a time when White Guilt was in fashion...
...Not ready to commit...
...Louisa Thompson's angular, efficient set morphs into Tom's office and in walks the play's Iago...
...however, Carter exhorts Tom not to "take a big dump on your one moment in the sun...
...Has Carter's brainwashing finally taken hold...
...Nowhere were Americans uglier than in Pacific Overtures, a musical based on Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan...
...this is something we can work on...
...His plays are as expansive as novels, but they effectively deploy the immediacy of the theater, charging poetic monologues and impressionistic dream sequences with present tense urgency...
...As an aide de camp, Kayama chooses Manjiro (Paolo Montalban), a sailor who has lived for a time in the U.S...
...Well-known for investing dramatic literature with a flavoring of jazz and blues, Wilson has also kept alive the tradition of the Big Drama by grappling with universal issues, notably freedom and personal accountability...
...What is really overweight here is the script...
...he prattles on about how the neighborhood's "niggers" squander their money on drink and gambling...
...Thanks to Kenny Leon's seamless direction, all the players make the most of their monologues while remaining closely tied to the ensemble...
...The time is 1904, the place is a large, drafty house in Pittsburgh's Hill District...
...Now desperately seeking her attention is young Citizen Barlow (John Earl Jelks), a stranger to the neighborhood...
...Both Carter and Jeannie recognize that he is hiding something...
...In addition, it is known as a Mecca for troubled souls because of the reported healing sorcery of its owner, the venerable Aunt Ester (Phylicia Rashad...
...Powhatan are caricatured harshly, cavorting about the stage in hook-nosed masks and cackling like hyenas...
...Junko Koshino's costumes underscore the transformation as the weary Kayama, now a high-ranking bureaucrat, tries on one Western garment after another and exchanges his Samurai sword for an American pistol...
...Unable to beat them, Kayama joins them...
...But he must also go beyond the personal and encounter the history of his people...
...The best here belong to Chisholm, Rashad and SantiagoHudson...
...Anion Miyamoto, who directed a successful revival at Tokyo's New National Theater, has now brought his Noh-inspired staging to Broadway's Studio 54, recast with AsianAmerican actors...
...The Japanification of the automobile, electronics and animation industries is hardly late-breaking news...
...He becomes an African, and is taken aboard a slave ship bound for America called the Gem of the Ocean...
...Kayama's ploy proves useless...
...Atkinson's performance is appealingly multidimensional...
...Helen disarms him with self-deprecating humor and unabashed flirtation...
...In any event, the meeting is observed by a submerged Samurai and a 10-year-old boy sitting on a branch above the treaty house...
...He mostly stands around representing everything the playwright dislikes...
...Tom is polite and self-conscious...
...The patter song "Please Hello ! " features a parade of foreign admirals who literally drape their national flags on the shoulders of the helpless Lord Abe (Sab Shimono...
...Presumably because he is expendable, Kayama is chosen to resolve an intractable dilemma...
...How could he throw her over for a fat chick...
...Okay, then break loose...
...While Ester narrates, the others don masks and create a symbolic dream world...
...The topic on everyone's lips is the death of a young mill worker accused of stealing nails from his employer...
...Jeannie does have something to lose, and Russell accurately captures the physical and emotional brittleness of a neurotic beauty queen...
...Traditional values were questioned and histories were revised in favor of the underdog...
...Thus the strangers are appeased and the Floating Empire remains uncontaminated...
...Kayama could dispatch Manjiro with his gun, but he remains too Japanese to pull the trigger...
...Finding themselves on opposite sides, the two must fight to the death...
...What Overtures lacks, however, is a Tevye, a sympathetic pair of eyes for viewing the play's events...
...The ideological clash between Solly and Caesar erupts into violence, and Citizen must make a choice...
...Wong) is thus restored to power...
...He will have to wait, Citizen is told, Aunt Ester operates on her own schedule...
...As Helen discovers, the problem with Tom is Tom...
...prior to meeting Helen, Tom was keeping his options open...
...Not really...
...Meanwhile, tradesmen Rutherford Selig (Raynor Scheine) and Solly Two Kings (Anthony Chisholm) drop by to haggle with Black Mary (LisaGay Hamilton), Aunt Ester's cook and caretaker...
...Hate crimes abound, with Western settlers slaughtered at random...
...I enjoy her," he tells Jeannie, "because she's not you—anything like you...
...The show's ambitions are greater than its achievements, but it hints at the many possibilities of its genre...
...This in itself sets Helen apart from the others: she is willing to roll up her sleeves...
...He has spent his life studying his reflection in the social mirror, not out of vanity but to make sure he is still there...
...Here Citizen is able to confront the ghost of the man who drowned for his misdeed...
...Somewhat like Fiddler on the Roof, the evening begins with a musical explanation of the ancient traditions that dominate the culture in which the action takes place...
...They shielded us from the indignities they suffered...
...Weidman and Sondheim may have been reluctant to unmask the American envoys, to show them as human beings...
...The socially relevant musical is due for a comeback...
Vol. 88 • February 2005 • No. 1
