March 29, 2024

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Geva Theatre Center welcomes back audiences with fun, rowdy ‘Vietgone’ | Theater

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&#13 Hansel Tan, Melody Butiu, Kurt Uy, and Andrew Cristi perform in Qui Nguyen's "Vietgone" at Geva Theatre Center through Oct 24. - PHOTO BY RON HEERKENS JR.&#13

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  • &#13 Hansel Tan, Melody Butiu, Kurt Uy, and Andrew Cristi conduct in Qui Nguyen’s “Vietgone” at Geva Theatre Centre by Oct 24.&#13
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It’s been so extended considering the fact that I have sat in a actual physical theatre that I can not bear in mind if audiences typically applaud as before long as an individual actions onstage to welcome them. Most likely. But I undoubtedly don’t bear in mind the applause emotion as euphoric as it did through the to start with second of “Vietgone.” The Geva Theatre Center manufacturing, initially scheduled for May perhaps 2020, is offered now by way of Oct. 24 with numerous COVID protocols in position (which includes a mask mandate for the audience).

The output, directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh, is value the wait.

The opening “Welcome to Geva” comes from playwright Qui Nguyen (performed by Hansel Tan), who cues the start of the pre-exhibit announcements. With this breaking of the fourth wall, the display promptly establishes its playful, irreverent tone. The ensemble comes onstage, acknowledges the range of white people today in the home, and introduces the premise of the perform: It is 1975, and the playwright’s moms and dads are Vietnam War refugees in America.

This participate in does not try to realistically portray gatherings. In its place it is a boisterous, silly, and rowdy re-imagination, starting with the language. In the heightened truth of “Vietgone,” the Vietnamese immigrants talk how the playwright likes to consider they would — not in Vietnamese or with accents, but in a up to date English which is presumably related to how the playwright and his friends converse.

Fair warning: there is loads of swearing. Though some theatergoers may complain about abnormal profanity, I hope the exhibit finds an viewers that is much more amused by the sexual intercourse and swearing than some in the Sunday matinee appeared to be.

Nguyen’s script explicitly acknowledges that it is striving to subvert racist depictions of Asian people in pop tradition. To that conclusion, the perform produces its own caricature to seize how incomprehensible and overseas white Americans are to new arrivers to the place (an case in point of a fluent English sentence: “Cheeseburger, baseball, discrimination”).

“Vietgone” throws a lot of things at a wall and hopes they’ll stick. There are direct addresses, typically in the form of rap soliloquies. Comic e book-inspired sequences. Reenactments of American passionate comedies. A kung fu fight with ninjas (delightfully staged by the motion/combat/intimacy director Rocio Mendez).

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&#13 Geena Quintos, Andrew Cristi, Kurt Uy, and Melody Butiu in "Vietgone," directed by Pirrone Yousefzadeh. - PHOTO BY RON HEERKENS JR.&#13

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  • &#13 Geena Quintos, Andrew Cristi, Kurt Uy, and Melody Butiu in “Vietgone,” directed by Pirrone Yousefzadeh.&#13
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The enjoy unquestionably cannot — and should not — do all the things. Just one disappointment, even though, was how tiny consideration was presented to anti-Black racism in favor of a see of The united states as a typically remarkable land of prospect. This was specifically a issue for the reason that of the regular use of rap Nguyen could have been more thoughtful in acknowledging the play’s credit card debt to Black Individuals.

Overall, the production handles the glorious chaos of the script fantastically. Nguyen (the true existence playwright, not the onstage persona) is acknowledged for his comedian-reserve aesthetic, which is introduced to daily life listed here with a backdrop of electronic artwork that signifies time and place.

Yousefzadeh is familiar with when to layer in songs and lights — this kind of as when the audience desires a distraction from the clumsy 50 percent-rhymes of the raps — and when to pull again and permit the focus be on the actors’ performances, which are a large position of the generation.

The characters are flawed — Tong (Geena Quintos) is a self-declared bitch with naïve expectations of The united states, and Quang (Kurt Uy) cheats on his spouse. The actors have more than enough charisma and appeal that you are rooting for the characters, even if you do not concur with their choices.

The relaxation of the ensemble (Hansel Tan, Andrew Cristi, Melody Butiu) play a assortment of characters. Their flexibility is amazing — ranging from goofy, cartoonish Us citizens to Vietnamese immigrants facing heartbreaking loss.

All of the eclectic storytelling tactics support convey to a tale that, at its core, is relatively regular. As the playwright suggests in the starting, “This is not a tale about war — it’s a story about falling in appreciate.”

The couple does not meet right up until the finish of Act I, but the moment it does the relaxation of the play follows the predictable beats of boy-satisfies-woman, boy-loses-lady, and many others.

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&#13 Geena Quintos (as Tong) and Kurt Uy (as Quang) play flawed but charming characters in Geva Theatre Center's production of "Vietgone," running through Oct. 24 - PHOTO BY RON HEERKENS JR.&#13

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  • &#13 Geena Quintos (as Tong) and Kurt Uy (as Quang) perform flawed but charming people in Geva Theatre Center’s generation of “Vietgone,” managing through Oct. 24&#13
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As comforting as the familiarity of a nicely-plotted romance can be, it’s the enjoy concerning the moms and dads and their small children that give “Vietgone” its psychological excess weight. I loved observing Tong and her mother, mutually hesitant to be trapped with each other in The usa, adapt to their new existence collectively.

In unique, the framing unit of the piece — the playwright Nguyen showing up as a character onstage — portrays a son making an attempt to realize and respect his father’s perspective of the Vietnam War. The closing scene elevates what would if not be an entertaining intimate comedy into a gorgeous story about the like between father and son.

No solitary perform can talk for an complete culture, and there need to have to be a lot more demonstrates on the American phase about Vietnam from Vietnamese views — specially to counteract the white savior narrative of the somehow-however-preferred musical “Miss Saigon.” “Vietgone” is an entertaining, well-crafted contribution to this canon, and Geva’s production is a heat welcome back again to the joys of in-man or woman theatre.

Geva Theatre Heart offers “Vietgone” Oct. 5 – 10, 12 – 17, and 19 – 24, at Geva’s Wilson Phase, 75 Woodbury Blvd. (585) 232-4382. $25-$64. For far more data (including showtimes) and tickets, go to gevatheatre.org/vietgone.

Katherine Varga is a freelance author for Town. Feed-back on this posting can be directed to Daniel J. Kushner, CITY’s arts editor, at [email protected].

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