| Swept Away and Yellow Face | |
| Last Edit: lowwriter 07:46 am EST 11/17/24 | |
| Posted by: lowwriter 07:38 am EST 11/17/24 | |
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| I saw Swept Away last night from third row orchestra center. I had read a few dismissive posts here and I think the book has been criticized when the show played at Berkeley Rep and Arena Stage. Though I agree the first half of the show could have been extended with more interaction with the two brothers new to the ship with the rest of the shipmates, I was carried away by the haunting songd by the Avett Brothers and the impressive singing and thoroughly committed performances of the four main actors John Gallagher Jr., Adrian Blaine Enscoe, Stark Sands and Wayne Duvall. They are joined by a fine ensemble of singers and dancers. I also liked the set design very much as well as the sound design which allows you to hear every word sung. John Gallagher Jr. gets another musical theater role perfectly matched to his performing skills as the cynical shipmate who revels in being the bad boy. Sands and Enscoe are thoroughly convincing as brothers who have only worked on a farm before. Their singing together is sublime. And Wayne Duvall is equally well cast as the wizened captain who intends this voyage as his last. The 90-minute show kept me riveted because of the music and the final moments of the show worked for me. It seemed to me that many in the audience were fans of the Avett Brothers’ music. I heard their songs before and I found them very pleasing to the ear and well matched to the story. By coincidence yesterday afternoon I sat third row orchestra for another one act show, Yellow Face. I hadn’t seen the play when it opened years ago but this is a fine revival of David Henry Hwang and one of his best efforts. It’s a shame the show has such a limited run because the casting and staging of the work is ideal. The play is very funny and sometimes poignant in its tale of David Henry Hwang’s activism in calling out past questionable casting of Asian roles in the American theater by having non-Asian actors. The playwright gets in trouble when he mistakenly agrees to cast a white actor whom he thinks is mixed race as the lead in his play. The whole cast does a great job playing multiple parts, several of them real life people, who happen to be both white and nonwhite. The plays zips along as a buoyant entertainment. Daniel Dae Kim, Francis Jue and the rest of the cast are just right. Jue in particular is terrific playing Hwang’s banker father and should be acknowledged around awards time. There was a talkback after the show and Hwang admitted he made a lot of changes to the play and cut the work by a half hour. The black actress Marinda Anderson made us laugh by admitting that where else could she play Margaret Cho and Jane Krakowski in the same play. |
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