Playwright Tanya Barfield’s Pulitzer-nominated “Blue Door” is ambitious in the range of topics and emotions it throws into its stew, from terror to humor, from classic questions of black identity—if you play the white man’s game, are you black enough?—to more contemporary versions surfacing in the age of Obama, such as, is it time to stop fixating on racial identity issues once and for all? But some stews, no matter how delicious their individual ingredients, end up tasting rather blah. And that’s the problem here: plenty of choice wordplay, funny bits and heartbreaking stories that, when mixed together, fall apart.
Lewis finds himself alone, his life something of a mess. He involuntarily “seeks” answers in his ancestors, who come to him in a series of sleepless waking dreams one night. How does this great grandson of slaves, now a member of the intellectual elite as a college mathematics professor, end up so unhappy, in search of “the why” of his life? Read the rest of this entry »
2000
It’s a great premise, with the potential to address racial discrimination and the immigrant experience with incisiveness and humor: two first-generation Cambodian-American siblings living in Long Beach learn about their mother’s flight from the Khmer Rouge from their childhood friend, now a gang member, whose history with the sister threatens to undermine her new relationship with her whitewashed, Orange County-born Chinese-American boyfriend. Sadly, there’s little good to be said about “Year Zero,” the first of two plays presented as Victory Gardens’ first “Ignition Festival,” devoted to emerging playwrights of color. At best, the production’s consistent stiffness and sluggish pace drains what should have been the play’s moments of highest drama. At worst, the writing itself feels like a public-service-announcement disguised as art. Not only is the plot formulaic, with a love triangle, coming-of-age story and a good man gone bad (at one point, the gang member actually says, and this is a quote: “There’s something I’ve gotta do, and after that this won’t be my home anymore”); but the script is littered with so much information about Cambodian culture, the stereotypes and hierarchies that different Asian immigrants hold, and SoCal culture (“Oh, Roscoe’s? That famous chicken and waffle place?”) that it’s more of a lecture-based pedagogical experience than a theatrical one. (Monica Westin)