Tristina Lee, Susan Baraka and JungSoo Ham (Photo by Tracy A. Leigh)
Reviewed by Amanda L. Andrei
EST/LA
Through June 9
RECOMMENDED
“The best place to view the Los Angeles of the next millennium,” wrote urban historian Mike Davis, “is from the ruins of its alternative future.” We could say the same about viewing L.A.’s past: The ruins of an alternative history give us a better vantage point to observe the city. Two Stop offers an imagined history on the eve of the 1992 L.A. uprising, yet in a paradox befitting the City of Angels, we need to get deeper into the grime before we can view the city more clearly.
Surveillance, news footage, and collective traumatic memory generate the tensest moments in this new drama by David Johann Kim. Walking into Justin Huen’s superb hyper-realistic set of a tiny South Central convenience store, audience members gasp in delight to discover that we can purchase and eat the candy bars — until we see that the store’s video cameras are livestreaming us to each other, a reminder that our images can easily turn into evidence for law enforcement (video design by Austin Quan). Historical footage — first, a still of the Rodney King beating, and later clips of the Reginald Denny beating and of South Central burning — place us squarely in the danger and rage of April 29, 1992. So when G.G. (Tristina Lee, alternating with Lyanna Jennaé), a black and Korean teenage girl, enters the market under the watchful eye of the elderly Korean immigrant Jong (JuneSoo Ham), it’s an echo of the 1991 slaying of Latasha Harlins by Soon Ja Du.
But in this alternate L.A., there’s no murder. Under Tracey A. Leigh’s direction, the market becomes a shelter-in-place for family stories to unfold and for the two lonely Angelenos to bond over freshly cooked ramen and spam. Tristina Lee inhabits an inquisitive and persistent G.G., peppering Jong with questions about his military service time. And JuneSoo Ham embodies Jong’s as a long-suffering immigrant, veteran, and caregiver with unshakeable self-assurance.
Two-Stop takes on vital issues about race and community, but has some problems: The action is too neat and the characters’ motivations and movement more nostalgic than urgent. G.G. and Jong get over their distrust of each other too easily. While we later learn of the coincidences that draw them together, they are more concerned about sharing their personal stories than reacting to the danger of the uprisings outside. Even when G.G.’s mother, Sunny (a striking and vibrant Suzen Baraka), bursts into the mart, her welcome chaos serves more to impart the dregs of their family history than to convey lessons from her inner turmoil.
And yet, this little urban market exerts a strange gravitational pull that parallels a deeper Asian American and hapa experience of displacement, particularly one born of overseas war. For instance, when Jong addresses Sunny in Korean, she snaps back, “I don’t speak that shit no more!” — a startling declaration that hints at a painful childhood where choices were made to sever an integral part of belonging to another culture. But in a comic moment on the phone, she whips out her fluency to mess with a caller, revealing that her roots to her motherland still run deep. This ability to codeswitch and navigate cultures is laced with rage, humor, and caprice.
It’s this kind of arc that allows us to see how the store — filled with Jong, G.G., and Sunny’s stories and foibles — becomes the metaphorical ruins of Asian and American militarized relations. Kim has built a world of strangers from different shores and of class struggle in the heart of America’s baffling, sprawling, sun-soaked desert metropolis. Two Stop’s ruins are more optimistic and tidier than they need to be, but they’re still ruins. It’s the final descent into destructive desires that allows us to view our confounding city in sharp relief.
EST/LA, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater. Opens Sat., May 4; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm, May 5, 12, 19 and June, Sun., 7 pm, May 26 and June 9; thru June 9. https://www.estlosangeles.org/
[Disclosure: Amanda L. Andrei and Two Stop playwright David Johann Kim are co-participants in the 2023 Circle X writer’s group.]
