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| Lani Gerrie Miyazaki, Stephen D. Newman. Photo: Thomas Victor. |
One of the major disgraces in American history, the
internment of huge numbers of Japanese-Americans during World War II, was
brought to national and world attention with increasing outrage in the 70s in
books, plays, and films. The first treatment on the New York stage was this
flawed drama, set largely at at California’s Santa Anita Racetrack, which was used
as a detainment camp from 1942 to the war’s end.
The play focuses on the Japan-born Tamako (Lani Gerrie
Miyazaki), who came to America in 1920 to marry, by arrangement, Satoru (Conrad
Yama), a man much older than she. She had a son, Michael (Sab Shimono), by him.
Michael grows up as the action develops across many short scenes. After he is
already mature, she meets and has an affair with a white, American engineer
(Stephen D. Newman), who gets her pregnant. Pearl Harbor intervenes, the family
is interned, and, among other catastrophes, Michael is killed by camp guards
after delivering a fiery speech denouncing American policies.
The ambiguous ending suggests either that Tamako remains to
contemplate her future life or that she goes home to Japan. Throughout, she has
been advised by a semi-realistic chorus-like figure, the Teacher (Henry Kaimu
Bal), to adapt to life the way a Japanese garden does to its landscape.
Though well performed and directed, the play—despite evidence
of writing talent—failed to handle its subject effectively, being “wispy and
confusing” and never entirely clear or convincing” to Edith Oliver; lacking in “coherence”
and being “simplistic” to Clive Barnes; too “slackly hung together” for Douglas
Watt; “unimaginative” to Martin Gottfried; an too melodramatic for Jack Kroll.
