You can just about always count on Village. But a musical adaptation of an Academy Award nominee? That means scoring and choreographing a story worth telling. This time, the folks from Issaquah bucked the odds.
And beat them.
The story starts with Taiwanese-American, Wai Tung (Michael K. Lee) and Chinese immigrant, Wei Wei (Dina Lynne Morishita), landlord and tenant and good friends in Greenwich Village, 1990s. Tung is gay, happily committed to his live-in boyfriend, Simon (Tyler Ross). Wei is straight, pursuing her career as a painting artist.
Complications: Tung is being hounded by daily phone calls from mom back home in Taiwan, to hurry up and start a family. Mom doesn’t know number one and only son is gay. Also, Wei lives in fear of the INS because her green card expired.
Solution: Tung and Wei marry for convenience provided Simon goes along, which he does. Mom gets off Tung’s back. Wei gets American citizenship. All is well, right?
Wrong, of course. Mom and dad insist on coming to the wedding. Ancestry demands it. Family pride demands it.
Naturally, anxieties run high. Cover-ups trigger into action. Lies multiply. Truth goes underground. All of which would be pretty standard stuff if it weren’t for specially imported director, John Tillinger.
Tillinger coaxes this essentially intimate story about personal feelings out into the open but without compromise and in a constantly broadening, public way.
Choreography gives physical expression to meaningful lyrics with something to say. The music gives heartfelt sweep and depth to insecurities, apprehensions, misunderstandings. The case including ensemble is superb, charged, hip; with it all through it.
Lee and Ross do more for gay rights than street protests, psychological treatises and congressional lobbying all rolled into one. They convince.
Morishita is a standout bohemian; free-spirited, open-minded; emotionally well-put-together.
Kati Kuroda and Ming Lee as Ma and Pa Gao will surprise you. Old world values are more flexible than you might think, and amazingly compatible with today’s changing world.
Ben Wang adds Chinese hospitality as Old Chen, the restaurant owner. Who wouldn’t want him putting on their wedding banquet?
Are today’s matches of mixes giving you headaches? This is better than an Excedrin. Have some fun. Take a seat at “The Wedding Banquet.”
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