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| King of the Yees (Chris Bennion) |
King of the Yees
ACT Theatre
Through October 1, 2017
Lauren Yee, the
inventive playwright of Ching Chong
Chinamen, has just been named the recipient of the 2017 Kesselring Prize
for playwriting from the National Arts Club. She will receive a $25,000 award and
the opportunity to reside for two weeks in the historic clubhouse of the
National Arts Club in order to develop her work.
She’s also got her play, King
of the Yees, running at ACT Theatre, with a lovely cast including Khanh Doan, Stan Egi, Ray Tagavilla, Annelih GH Hamilton, and Joseph Ngo. She has brought her work to
Washington State on numerous occasions, most often to do workshops and attend
retreats for writing like Hedgebrook. She feels like a local writer.
King of the Yees is an inventive and pseudo-autobiographical
play. We begin by meeting “Lauren” and her “father” (Hamilton and Tagavilla)
and then immediately find out that they are playing in a play Lauren has
written, when Lauren (Doan) shows up with her father (Egi) to rehearsal. The
play separates into back-and-forth scenes with the actors taking a break and
Lauren becoming wrapped up in a quest to find her father when he goes missing.
Yee’s plays are often about American Chinese folk or grappling
with assimilation versus cultural appreciation. This one included. Larry Yee,
Lauren’s father, is presented as a larger-than-life character with strong ideas
and connections to his ancestors. Lauren presents herself as a much more
assimilated American who is not sure that she has that much time to worry about
ancestors and honoring that culture. But her search, embodied in the play,
leads her to reconsider her own connection to her father.
One of the most important themes and moments in the play has
her realize that she loves someone she barely knows (her father). The way Yee
gets there is through her imagination or a surreal journey into magic, and
includes a Chinese dragon dancer, a sacred door to the Yee Universe, and
gathering articles to create a ritual as dictated by Ancestors.
There is plenty to laugh at/with in the play, and a lot of
color added by costume designer Christine
Tschirgi. Inventively directed by Desdemona
Chiang, with sleek set components by Carey
Wong, and importantly helpful lighting (to determine where “outside
rehearsal” and “inside” are) by Jessica
Trundy, it’s an easy, though a sometimes confusing journey to take.
It’s a bit unfortunate that the play must be staged in the
round. When ACT was built, they made one of their mainstage spaces permanently
in the round. “Round” works well for some productions, but frankly, it’s a
strain all too often for ACT productions. It leads to some weird blocking
(actor movements) where they have to keep turning around and around to talk to
various audience members and that leads to some aimless wandering on stage.
Opening night, the performances felt a bit on the “pushed”
side – where Egi is still finding his way into the bombastic Larry, but was
over-caricaturizing a bit. Given a full week of performances, this cast will
likely have found surer footing and a warmer connection with each other.
While a bit on the disjointed side, the play is meant to
talk to non-Asian audiences and “explain” things we may not understand. For
mostly-white Seattle, that lesson is well taken.
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