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99 HISTORIES
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Lounge Theatre
Through Oct. 5
Jeong, a Korean concept not easily translatable to English, is an integral theme in playwright Julia Cho’s potentially absorbing family drama.
As explained by Sah-Jin (Sharon Omi), a widowed immigrant from Korea, to her desperately troubled daughter Eunice (Julia Cho, not the playwright), it’s an intimacy that transcends love or hate: a feeling of closeness with another person whom you may not even like, but whose absence creates an unfillable vacuum in one‘s life.
But Eunice doesn’t get it. A former musical prodigy whose encounter with mental illness has torpedoed her career, she’s evolved into a bitter and difficult person who reacts to Sa-Jin’s effort to nurture and support her with accusations and resentment.
And that’s unfortunate, since the prickly Eunice really does need help, having recently split from her concerned boyfriend Daniel (Brendan Bradley) and is now back home after years away. She’s returned for a specific reason: to wrestle with choices brought on by her unplanned pregnancy, and with her fears of passing her illness along to her unborn child.
For advice she turns to Paul (David Huynh), a former schoolmate who’s a doctor and who has matured into a kind and caring man. You can see that Eunice likes him as she struggles to conceal her disappointment on discovering he’s engaged to another woman. (That she’s worth redeeming from her own acerbic nature becomes apparent in her honorable striving to maintain their friendship despite his new attachment.)
Eventually the conflict between mother and daughter comes to a head, but not before the secrets of both have been uncovered and crucial events from Sah-Jin’s youth emerge.
As directed by Leslie Ishii, these flashback sequences are among the most unwieldy in the production. Designer Art Betanzos’s handsome, unfussy layout unfortunately makes no provision for tiers, meaning that past and present sequences, as well as Eunice’s solo monologues, tend to run together on a very small proscenium. Designer Lonnie Rafael Alcatraz’s lighting attractively underscores some scenes but isn’t adequate to reflect the more radical shifts in time and place.
More problematic than the tech is the vapidity of the women characters in the flashbacks: a mysterious Woman, portrayed by Jolene Kim and both the youthful Sa-Hin and the youthful Eunice, portrayed by Janice Pak. Neither character has much weight or color, and as a result these sequences have an irritating saccharine edge. Bradley, who doubles as the mysterious man in Sah-Jin’s past, does fine by handling both roles with simplicity. Omi’s many-layered mom is a work-in-progress that looks to be getting where it needs to go. When she finally loses her temper with the intractably angry Eunice, the effect is immensely satisfying and cathartic.
Perhaps the best work overall comes from Huynh, whose warm persuasive presence stands in sharp contrast to Cho’s constrained self-conscious performance. Fashioned with chiseled reactions and responses, including some marvelous tears, it ends up steering us into weepy melodrama rather than into the heart and soul – the jeong if you will – of the play.
Lounge Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd; Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.; through Oct. 5. brownpapertickets.com/event/756058
