Theatre in Review: Once Upon a (korean) Time (Ma-Yi Theater Company)Daniel K. Isaac's inventive chronicle play, now at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, weaves historical traumas and folk tales into a seamless braid that, over the course of a century, extends halfway around the world. Just as the musical Into the Woods treats classic fairy tales as expressions of primal feelings about (among other things) family, romantic love, and the passage of time, Isaac's gritty, often violent, multigenerational drama shows how, for his characters, Korean myths are a form of spiritual sustenance, a thread of continuity that makes sense of their troubled, turbulent lives. To showcase these stories, he has created an intricate, compulsively gripping narrative of his own. Once Upon a (korean) Time begins with two soldiers in 1930, during the country's long-running battle for independence; huddling together amid explosions and the rattle of machine guns, one of them says, pleadingly, "Tell me a story." And we're off, with a saga of magical calabashes and genie-like creatures. Next, it is 1943, and three comfort women -- the odious euphemism for Koreans kidnapped into sexual servitude by the Imperial Japanese Army -- escape, briefly, from their degradation by acting out the tale of a young woman selling herself to seafarers, thus saving her blind father from poverty. The following sequence begins in 1952, with bombs falling on terrified civilians in the Korean War, and ends in 1972, when one survivor, a single mother, surrenders her child for adoption. The action then leaps across time and space for a family reunion that takes place in the shadow of the 1992 LA riots. The finale unfolds in present-day New York at a meeting of adopted Korean Americans -- where, after all these years, the old stories are still being told. It would be revealing too much to explain the direct lineage that leads from the filthy, ordnance-riddled trench populated with cannon fodder to the chic Manhattan get-together with a variety of married couples -- gay, lesbian, and straight. Indeed, one of the play's main pleasures is figuring out these connections; equally fascinating is how the old legends -- filled with separated/reunited parents and children, among other twists of fate -- reflect, and comment on, the characters' real-world dilemmas. Working on a broad canvas and making inventive use of anachronistic dialogue, Isaac achieves a wide-angle point of view that's unusual in contemporary American playwriting. Like many of his colleagues, he is deeply interested in issues of personal identity; unlike the others, he views them through the lens of history, with distinctively illuminating results. Ralph B. Peña's production employs the full array of theatrical tools, from the simple (bird puppets, animal masks, bubble machines) to the high-tech (stunning video imagery and sound effects). Se Hyun Oh's set uses a pair of movable monoliths, outlined in LED tape, to create a variety of locations, each of which is individually shaped by Oliver Wason's fluent use of color and sidelight effects. Projection designer Yee Eun Nam conjures up a stream of imagery, including serpents, magical personages, flames, and, in a final coup de théâtre, a family portrait of characters from decades past. Phuong Nguyen's costumes display an easy mastery of several fashion eras and military styles. Fabian Obispo's sound design is especially effective in the nerve-shredding opening battle and later in the escalating chaos of the LA riot. Peña's actors throw themselves into multiple roles with gusto. Sasha Diamond is heartbreaking as the most vulnerable of the comfort women, a virgin being held back as a special gift for top brass to deflower. David Lee Huynh delineates two very different kinds of soldiers, one tragic and the other a rapist. Teresa Avia Lim is amusing as a modern-day lesbian, recalling how she discovered her sexual orientation through the story of "Korean Cinderella." Jon Norman Schneider begins the play as a soldier fighting to survive, returning as a wisecracking gay husband and father. David Shih is touching as a blind peasant who deeply regrets his daughter's supreme sacrifice. Standing out in this assured company are Sonnie Brown, steely yet vulnerable as a liquor store proprietor threatened by rioters, and Jillian Sun as the long-lost daughter she loves and disapproves of. Not everything works: The context of the opening scene, depicting events that will likely be the least familiar to a Western audience, could be made clearer. The character known as the Sea Dragon, who commandeers the action for a campy musical number, is wanly rendered, being rather too reminiscent of Ursula in The Little Mermaid; the sequence is jarring, and a certain quality of fabulousness is missing. And the proliferation of lighting, sound, and video effects may be a little too much at times, distracting one's attention away from the complicated, exposition-heavy narrative. Still, this is a production that largely delivers on its enormous ambitions; it's always good to see a talented playwright swinging for the fences, backed up by a cast and creative team firmly on his wavelength. This is almost surely the biggest thing May-Yi Theater Company has given us; it may also be the best. --David Barbour 
|
