Seeing 'Red' Seeing 'Red' (July 23, 2004)

TheatreWorks opens Chay Yew's epic drama

By Julie O'Shea

Every once in a while a play comes along that is as important as it is moving.

"Red," a 1998 drama by Chay Yew, which TheatreWorks opened last weekend at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto, is both these things: a bristling piece of history about China's infamous Cultural Revolution that is so intense at times it will make your toes curl with rage.

Yew's story about the devastating consequences of the Cultural Revolution starts off a little slow, but the playwright quickly pulls in his audience, captivating us with a finely crafted mystery of family secrets and political unrest.

Cutting back and forth through time, "Red" blends fact with fiction seamlessly, although its genius is hard to spot early on, as Yew stumbles through the first few scenes with sometimes excessively verbose dialogue.

When the lights come up, Yew introduces us to Sonja (Allison Sie), a modern-day, Asian-American romance novelist, who is hoping to unearth a "credible" story in the tattered ruins of a Chinese opera house. It's an admirable goal considering her latest bestsellers include such titles as "Bound Feet, Bound Lives" and "Love in the Jade Pagoda."

The delivery of Sonja's opening lines, however, lose some of their power against scenic designer Ching-Yi Wei's red-and-green hued opera house, which would have fared better on a larger stage. The set looks suffocating, and the large boulders the actors use to climb on and off the stage are eyesores.

But this point becomes obsolete once Francis Jue makes his entrance. Jue, fresh from Broadway's "Thoroughly Modern Millie," plays opera diva Master Hua, whose flamboyant style and grace continue to haunt the deserted performance hall years after he's purged during China's devastating cultural genocide.

Sonja explains to us that this operatic icon is her muse, one of the main reasons she came to Shanghai in the first place. As if on cue, Hua, bejeweled in a lavish headdress and robe, emerges from the opera house shadows and begins chronicling, in perfect detail, the story of his life and ultimate demise.

Jue is simply radiant as the high-maintenance opera star. Each time he opens his mouth or flicks his wrist, it is done with such distinct purpose that it is hard to tell where the character ends and the actor begins.

Grace Hsu's stoic Ling, Hua's young, eager opera student and later a feared revolutionary guard, figures prominently into this plot sequence.

TheatreWorks director Robert Kelley doesn't spare us from the brutality of the Red Guard, allowing the beatings of Hua to take place graphically in front of the audience. While there is, of course, no actual physical contact between the actors during these scenes, their jarring dramatics, combined with harsh scene music and lighting, lets us feel each crippling blow.

The fact that Hua dies is hardly the secret of "Red," rather it's the intricate tapestry Yew weaves around his central characters that keeps us suspended, wondering how the playwright will choose to end his epic.

When we realize our narrator, Sonja, is harboring an explosive secret, it becomes clear that Yew has cleverly set us up for an unexpected finish.

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

Information

What: TheatreWorks presents "Red" by Chay Yew
Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
When: Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; July 27 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays at 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. (Aug. 7 at 8 p.m. only); Sundays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Aug. 8 at 2 p.m. only). Closes Aug. 8.
Cost: $20-$48
Call: 903-6000 or visit theatreworks.org

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