by Sam Juliano
The beauty about Manhattan theatre going is that diamonds are often found in the rough. Straddling the precarious line between endearment and sappiness, Korean-American Lloyd Suh’s new short play, American Hwangap unearths some valid emotion from a story of abandonment and return. Making superlative use of a sparsely-adorned stage, which includes a symbolic kitchen table, director Trip Cullmanachieves the intimacy that rarely informs larger productions with more elaborate sets. The key to the effectiveness of this piece is that there is rarely more than two people on stage at the same time, and as a result there is a sense of urgency which often sheds light on the inner feelings of the work’s protagonists. The four family members who were left behind by Min Suk Chun 15 years earlier are divided on whether to forgive him and extend to him the welcome carpet on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Chun lost his job as an engineer and returned to Korea, while leaving his family in suburban West Texas to fend for themselves. While the ex-wife professes surface indignation, she’s quite willing to engage in an extended ‘tumble in the hay’ which illustrates sustained deprivation in more ways than one. She and her youngest son are willing to great clearance for an amicable reunion, but the daughter and the older son refuse to excuse past indiscretions, which are candidly revealed in some stimulating off stage monologues by the older son, speaking on a phone. The older daughter confesses with irony: “You weren’t there for either one of my weddings, “but I did get the toaster sent after my first divorce.” (more…)
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