The Korean Wave 2006 - Korean Cultural Service

The New York Times, wednesday, september 27, 2006
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As Boo-Seng stands rigid, unable to face the next moment,
Jerry gently prods him: “Mr. Lee? I have to be at
another office by 4. Let’s go.”
Pulled from his reverie, Boo-Seng mechanically replies:
“Yes. Let’s go.”
That everyday phrase is used with resourceful cunning
by Ms. Cho throughout “Durango,” accruing new resonance
with each repetition. She has a gift for imbuing
homely details with a just perceptible varnish of poetic
feeling. Someone in the play is always impatiently saying
“let’s go” to someone else, but all three of the Lee men
are revealed to be painfully aware of their own tendency
to stand stock still, emotionally speaking. The road trip
that provides the dramatic impetus of “Durango” may
be a near-cliche, but it is nevertheless an apt metaphor
for a drama that gently contemplates how hard it can be
to move forward in life, even when you can see the right
road stretching out before you.
Returning home, Boo-Seng interrupts the silence over
dinner to announce gruffly that it’s time for a family vacation.
“I have some time off,” he explains. This excites
Jimmy, who has experienced little family togetherness
since the death of his mother some years ago. But Isaac,
broody and uncomfortable, would rather stay at home.
He has to be blackmailed into going by Jimmy, who wins
him over by giving him a peek at his secret notebook,
where he defeats his anxieties by proxy through the exploits
of comic strip superheroes.
Although he bores the boys with an enthusiastic pep talk
about Korean history, Boo-Seng has never learned the
language of real communication. When the family stops
at a motel for the night, he must unload his grief on a
stranger by the pool. (In one of the play’s rare false notes,
Boo-Seng moves a little too smoothly into a glib moment
of self-reflection, wondering: “Why did I want so little?
Where did I learn to want so little for myself?”)
All three of the Lee men are struggling with a secret, and
the play ultimately settles into predictable emotional and
dramatic grooves. Both boys’ lives have been shaped by
their father’s unspoken disappointment in his own, and
his determination that they stick to the standard formula
for achievement in America. Isaac confesses to his brother
that he never really showed up for his med-school interview
in Hawaii. Jimmy confides that he actually hates
swimming. Looming ahead like an Applebee’s on the
roadside, familiar to the point of banality, is another dark
secret, the big H: homosexuality.
Thankfully, the well-worn contours eventually give
way to a few unexpected kinks and crannies. And the
unadorned performances are pleasing, with Mr. Saito
etching a quietly moving portrait of a man quietly coming
to terms with the knowledge that his sacrifice may
never yield the satisfactions he had hoped for. Mr. Yew,
a playwright himself, has a graceful sense of pacing, and
the production is uncommonly well designed. Daniel
Ostling’s sets, gently lighted by Paul Whitaker, contrast
the cramped spaces of the men’s lives with the freedom
of the road.
And despite the schematic flaws of her plot, Ms. Cho
wisely resists the kind of feel-good ending that would
wrap up a movie on a heartwarming note. The voyage of
the Lee men may take them through some unexpected
emotional territory, but they end where they began, retreating
into comfortable isolation, the fragile shoots of
new feeling between them abandoned, at least for now.
DURANGO
By Julia Cho; directed by Chay Yew; sets by Dan Ostling; costumes
by Linda Cho; lighting by Paul Whitaker; original songs by
Julia Cho; sound and additional music by Fabian Obispo; production
stage manager, Buzz Cohen; interim general manager, Seth
Shepsle; associate artistic director, John Dias; associate producers,
Peter DuBois and Mandy Hackett; director of production, Ruth
E. Sternberg. Presented by the Public Theater, Oskar Eustis, artistic
director; Mara Manus, executive director; in association with
the Long Wharf Theater, Gordon Edelstein, artistic director; Joan
Channick, managing director. At the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette
Street, at Astor Place, East Village; (212) 967-7555. Through Dec.
10. Running time: 1 hour 3 minutes.
WITH: Ross Bickell (Ned/Jerry), James Saito (Boo-Seng Lee), Jon
Norman Schneider (Jimmy Lee), Jay Sullivan (Red Angel/Bob)
and James Yaegashi (Isaac Lee).
Laugh Now.
You May Not
When These Women
Rule the World.
The best parodies start with great titles. So Young
Jean Lee’s hysterically funny “Songs of the
Dragons Flying to Heaven,” now at the Here
Arts Center, is perfect, because the show is actually about
minority rage, mudfish in tofu, femininity’s inner viciousness
and a secret Korean plot to rule the world.
“You may laugh now, but remember my words when you
and your offspring are writhing under our yoke,” says
Becky Yamamoto as the young woman known only as
Korean-American.
Ms. Yamamoto is priceless, having already set the politically
incorrect tone with the opening line, “Have you ever
noticed how most Asian-Americans are slightly braindamaged
from having grown up with Asian parents?”
After a few more shockingly racist comments, she points
out that some American men “like that retarded quality.”
Ms. Yamamoto’s contemporary outspokenness is nearly
equaled by the behavior of the three pretty, giggling
Korean dancers in brightly colored traditional dresses.
They speak in Korean much of the time, but audiences
will notice that the word “sex” comes up quite often.
By ANITA GATES
In English, one of the women perkily suggests to the others,
“Shall we play ‘hookers and johns’?” More than once,
a particularly young dancer announces with a demure
smile that being a prostitute is fun. Later the three women
(Jun Sky Kim, Haerry Kim and Jennifer Lim) take turns,
with the potent gruesome humor of a Quentin Tarantino
movie, miming horrible ways to commit suicide.
Now and then a white American couple (Juliana Francis
and Brian Bickerstaff) appear, arguing about sex, alcoholism,
petty theft and their relationship in general. In
the middle of this Mr. Bickerstaff’s character announces:
“You know what’s awesome? Being white.”
But Ms. Lee’s play, which she also directed brilliantly,
is not only about that sort of supposedly ingenuous extreme.
Just when the largely Caucasian audience thought
it had caught up to Ms. Lee’s off-and-on ironic point
of view, she called our bluff again. Whites are bigoted,
Asians are bigoted, everybody’s bigoted, and isn’t it great
that it’s all out in the open now, and we can laugh about
it? But not really.
“Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven” continues through Oct. 14
zat Here Arts Center, 145 Avenue of the Americas, at Dominick
Street, South Village; (212) 352-3101 or www.here.org.
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Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.
Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.