Jeffrey Han (Photo courtesy of Write Act Repertory)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Write Act Repertory at the Brickhouse Theatre
Through June 23
In Expect-Asian, directed by Anne Mesa, writer/solo performer Jeffrey Han shares his experience as a Chinese American kid with a dream at odds with the expectations of his family and his culture. The show, which runs under an hour, builds around a familiar dramatic theme — the clash between American born kids and their immigrant parents — but Han is an engaging performer, and his anecdotes can be entertaining.
Before the narrative proper begins, the audience is treated to a musical recital. Wearing a white cowboy hat and boots and a contrasting salmon colored dress, musician Annie Zhang extracts melodies on the erhu, a two-stringed Chinese musical instrument which (according to Wikipedia) is sometimes referred to as the Chinese violin. To an unaccustomed Western ear (mine), it’s an uncommon sound, but affecting and an appropriate prelude to this narrative about intermingling cultures.
Han’s alter ego in the play is named Jack. Jack’s first taste of the onstage theatrical experience comes when he is five, and he gets to recite the refrain from Macbeth’s three witches, “Bubble bubble, toil and trouble…” At that point, his dad, who is ambitious for his son to become a doctor or scientist, isn’t too worried. After all, the boy is only 5.
The narrative takes us through Jack’s elementary school years on the playground, where he oscillates between trying to join in with the Asian-American kids and, when that effort flops, with the White ones. But he ends up an outlier with both groups.
Later, in high school, he starts to hang with an American kid whose dad’s style of parenting is far more laissez-faire than his own. This is an eye opener. His own stern father expects him to tow the line with his whereabouts and his studies. His inclinations to pursue other dreams remain under wraps.
As a dramatic piece, Expect-Asian is more a promising beginning than a fully realized work. It’s a solo turn about a young actor overcoming obstacles in working towards his goal, and the final sequences are a bit too endemic to the profession to be all that interesting to those outside it, nor are they as punchy as those that come before. The pacing could stand a bit of calibration, and a more complex lighting scheme — unavailable at this modest venue —would boost the show’s theatrics (Lighting by Zad Potter), But Han’s talents as a storyteller are evident and make one want to see more of it in the future.
Write Act Repertory at the Brickhouse Theatre – 10950 Peach Grove St., North Hollywood. Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm; thru June 23. www.writeactrep.org/los-angeles
