“The Goose Father and the North Korean Defector”
Playwright Hansul Jung has had plenty of experience with the
social and psychological obstacles created by a life lived in different cultures.
Born in South Korea and raised from age six in South Africa, she moved back to
South Korea at 15, struggling to fit back in. At 20, Jung transitioned to the USA,
where she graduated from Yale’s playwriting program and began writing such
works as Among the Dead, which subtly
reflected her experiences. Such is the background to her theatrically and
intellectually interesting if insufficiently moving and dramatically diffuse Wild Goose Dreams, which had its world
premiere in 2017 at the La Jolla Playhouse and is now at the Public Theater’s
Martinson Hall.
 |
| Michelle Krusiec, Peter Kim, Joél Pérez. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
 |
| Michelle Krusiec, Francis Jue. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
 |
| Kendyl Ito (rear), Peter Kim, Joél Pérez. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
The chorus is extremely busy early on, especially when
representing the sounds and comments (“reboot,” “system not responding,” etc.) of
two computers having a Facebook conversation, material that greatly overstays
its welcome. Moreover, while the chorus lingers on the perimeters, its
significance diminishes as the oddly constructed play moves along.
 |
| Lulu Fall, Michelle Krusiec, Francis Jue. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Minsung is a married businessman whose wife (Jaygee Macapugay)
and daughter have been in America for seven years, receiving the money he regularly
sends. Ultimately, they’ve lost their closeness to him, and he to them. Nanhee,
whom he meets on a dating site (his screen name is MrGooseman, hers MinersDaughter),
is a North Korean defector, feeling guilt for having left her father behind.
 |
| Peter Kim, Michelle Krusiec. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Social media turn out to be insufficient replacements for
the kind of connection Minsung and Nanhee need with another human being. Sadly,
the scenes between the lovers tend more toward the ordinary and conventional
than anything notably insightful or touching. And, given the sacrifices
involved, the defector theme seems weak. Just this morning, the New York Times had a powerful
story related to North Korean defectors that would make for far more dramatically compelling subject matter.
 |
| Company of Wild Goose Dreams. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Nanhee’s father (Francis Jue, giving the ripest performance),
punished by the authorities for his daughter’s defection, flits in and out via
Nanhee’s imagination, serving at first as a sort of narrator. He brings us into
the play’s world via an allegorical story about a female angel whose wings are
stolen by a man, quite similar to the Japanese tale dramatized in the nō play The Feather Robe (Hagoromo).
 |
| Lulu Fall, Michelle Krusiec, Francis Jue, Peter Kim, Joél Pérez, Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Bird symbolism pervades the play, often fuzzily, especially when
depicting penguins, birds that cannot fly. When North Korean soldiers appear,
they do so in penguin masks. A penguin even enters via a toilet. And, of course,
there’s the titular bird, represented by Minsung, who is what the Koreans call
a “goose father,” a man who lives and works in one place and, for job-related
reasons, his family somewhere distant. (The Japanese use the term tanshin
funin, “bachelor husband”).
 |
| Peter Kim and company. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Most memorable is Clint Ramos’s exuberantly imaginative set—excellently
lit by Keith Parham—which surrounds the audience with neon-bright Korean signage
and images redolent of Korean history, families, and traditional and pop
culture; even the room’s pillars are painted with colorful Korean designs. The auditorium
is arranged proscenium style, with a sparsely dressed set backed by an overhead
catwalk. Slits in the floor allow scenic units to emerge and disappear. Steps to the auditorium
floor run across the stage front, interrupted at center by a runway thrusting midway
into the audience and looking strikingly like the hanamichi used in Japan’s kabuki theatre. Silverman, disappointingly,
makes limited use of this potentially exciting feature.
 |
| Michelle Krusiec, Peter Kim. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Public Theater/Martinson Hall
425 Lafayette Ave., NYC
Through December 16
