"The Musical That Could Go Wrong"
When you think about it, calling a show Comfort Women: A New Musical is not so far away from “Springtime
for Hitler,” the parody title Mel Brooks gave his show within a show in The Producers. What next, Slavery: A New Musical? Genocide: A New Musical? And Comfort Women is by no means a parody; it’s
a heartfelt attempt to dramatize a significant historical tragedy. It’s also a regrettable
misfire. |
| Sam Hamashima, Abigail Choi Arder, Jack Vielbig. Photo: NK KIM. |
Of course, his physical condition surely had nothing to do
with the show—or, at the least, wasn’t helped by it—but the house manager and
staff rushed in, the show was stopped, and attempts began to assist the
gentleman. After nearly 25 minutes, EMS guys arrived, escorted the poor fellow,
now feeling a tad better, out, and the audience was told it would take another
10 minutes before Comfort Women
resumed.
I have no idea why we had to wait so long after the man had
left. Last year, something similar happened, not once but twice, while I was watching the Broadway revival of Carousel, the details of which can be
read here. Those incidents were handled with remarkable alacrity, unlike
the situation at Comfort Women, but the
different response times is surely related to the easier access provided to a
Broadway orchestra than to the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, located on the fourth
floor of Playwrights Horizons. Still, the show should have been ready to go at
the crack of the whip and not to have forced the audience to wait another 10
minutes before resuming.
Then came incident number two. Several scenes later, a
scenic mishap occurred involving a wooden wall that slides out from stage right
to represent the background to a Japanese general’s office. Essentially, given
the minimalist style of Stella Hyun Joo Oh’s scenery, composed mainly of wood-slatted
walls with doorways that open in a variety of configurations, it isn’t really
necessary; perhaps the director will wisely cut its use from subsequent performances.
The mishap happened when the wall was supposed to retract but refused to do so,
bolloxing up what followed as actors and crew tried their best to push it back
offstage. When they finally succeeded, the audience applauded.
As for Comfort Women,
it’s a sincere but problem-riddled attempt to put on stage the horrific story
of the euphemistically named “comfort
women” (ianfu 慰安婦 in Japanese) the hundreds of thousands of
women who were deceived or outright kidnapped from their Korean towns and villages
(Japan had occupied Korea since early in the century) to be sold into sex slavery
for the “comfort” of the Japanese military during its campaigns throughout Asia.
When the existence and extent of these operations was widely disclosed in the
1980s, it stirred a
hornet’s nest of controversy between Japan and Korea that the Koreans believe
has not yet been satisfactorily resolved by its former occupiers.
Comfort Women, by
the way, is not really “a new musical.”
It was presented at St. Clement’s in 2015, although no professional reviews
appear on Show-Score.com. It has music by Brian Michaels and Taeho Park, lyrics
by Michaels, a book by Dimo Hyun Jun Kim, Osker David Aguirre, and Joann Malory
Mieses, direction by Dimo Hyun Jun Kim, and choreography by Hyun Kim.
The work’s promotional material declares that the
production, a product of the Dimo Kim Musical Theatre Factory, is “the first
ever all Asian Off-Broadway cast led by an East Asian director.” To which one
might ask, what about China-born Tisa Chang, director of numerous Asian-American
casts at the Pan Asian Repertory? Or Tisa Chen?
 |
| Chloe Rise, Roni Shelley Perez. Photo: NK KIM. |
A cast of two-dozen Asian-Americans—uncommonly large for Off
Broadway—of numerous ethnic backgrounds (mixed and otherwise) plays the many characters, some portraying
multiple roles. The action depicts the ways in which women were taken from their
families and hometowns, how they were transported to Indonesia, the cruel
conditions they lived in, and their abusive treatment (including branding) by the
countless soldiers they serviced.
It also presents a melodramatic plotline in which a Korean sergeant
in the Japanese army named Minsik Lee (Mattheus Ting)—given the Japanese name
Nakamura—befriends a woman called Geoun Kim (Abigail Choi Areder) and participates
in a plan to help her and her friends escape. This puts him in conflict with a
Japanese sergeant, son of General Hiroshi (Matthew Ting), who also has problems
with his father.
 |
| Roni Shelley Perez (center), Sarah States (upper left), Chloe Rice. Photo: NK KIM. |
The episodic plot—running from 1942 to 1945—is something of
a mishmash. It includes pistol-to-the head executions, choreographic interludes
of soldiers fighting, sometimes with incongruously decorative umbrellas subbing
for rifles, and dance episodes featuring the women, one of them using simulated
versions of the long sleeves worn in traditional Korean dance. The scattershot sequence
of scenes is often weakly integrated, and long, static passages with little
dramatic progress are frequent.
Musical numbers sometimes evolve more or less organically
from dramatic situations and others appear stuck on, like the comic (in theory,
at least) sequence featuring an Indonesian boy named Nani (Matthew Bautista)
singing in a ragtime-sounding song about his family laundromat. (This may be a
new addition as I can’t find it in the press script, where Nani sings about
something else.)
 |
| Matheus Ting, Jake Vielbig. Photo: NK KIM. |
A superior score would have helped, but, except for a moment
here and there, the music is barely tuneful, ranging from bland songs that
sound like faux-operatic efforts in the Les
Miz mode to generic pop-oriented numbers, not one of which conveys a Korean
or Japanese feeling. Given the excellence of much modern Korean and Japanese
music this is a major drawback. And I’m not talking about K-Pop or J-Pop. At
the same time, several scenes forget they’re part of a musical and lack even
the underscoring heard in others. Finally, too many lyrics are bogged down in clunky,
pompous verbosity, as here:
WHY SHOULD YOU REJOICE?
DON’T YOU KNOW SOMETIMES LIFE’S NOT FAIR?
WHY SHOULD YOU ESCAPE,
LEAVING ME STUCK WITH YOUR PAIN TO BEAR?
STUCK WITH MY FATHER TO FACE PAIN AND DISGRACE.
HE IS MY HERO I AM HIS TO DEBASE.
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO NOT HAVE A VOICE, TO NEVER HAVE HAD A CHOICE.
Perhaps the greatest problem is the cast, an eager but largely inexperienced
and versatility-challenged group of young actors who appear more like a group
of college students than a company of professionals. Despite their Asian-American
backgrounds, their speech and behavior weigh more heavily on the American than
the Asian side of that equation. Now and then, a professional-sounding singer
can be heard (mainly on the distaff side), but the overall quality of the
acting is amateurish, serving only to make the characters more overtly
stereotypical while emphasizing the inadequacies of the writing.
Comfort Women serves a useful
purpose in seeking to find the theatrical means to explore the ramifications of
a significant modern problem reflected in the ongoing worldwide practice of sex
trafficking, a connection we must, of course, make for ourselves. But good
intentions and a worthy cause are cold comfort for audiences seeking something
more than these inadequate theatrics.
OTHER
VIEWPOINTS:
Peter
Jay Sharp Theatre/Playwrights Horizons
416
W. 42nd St., NYC
Through
September 2
