News from Waikiki

We don’t often do theater reviews, but I have gone to two presentations by a tiny actors group in a funky warehouse that have both knocked me out. I am speaking of the Yellow Brick Studio on Keawe Street around the corner from Lex Brodie’s in Kakaako.

They light up the doorway next to a chain link garage opening with bar lights. You twist in a narrow opening all painted black, because it’s really the stage wings you’re walking through. The seats are packed together, I think maybe 40 of them, in three tiers. The actors perform about five feet from your face. It’s a bit unfair to judge how much they can portray emotion with the flick of an eyelid at that range. I find it hard to look directly at their faces, often, for fear of making eye contact.

But the productions are truly creative. Their newest is the world premiere of Ten Million Reawakenings. It refers to the reincarnations of life. It is set in old Japan , and everything has been done to a T. A shrine’s pieces were borrowed from the Chinatown Shinto Shrine. Kimonos come from a private collection. Koto music floats behind the scenes. It’s amazing what these people have done with this tiny space.

The hero is a samurai who promises his wife never to remarry. When he does, the sweet, new, young thing is haunted by the ghost of first wife. There is a strong moral in this simple tale. But what makes it come alive is the creativity in telling the story in the small space.

The Yellow Brick Studio is a work of love by The Actors Group or TAG. The Ten Million Reawakenings ensemble includes TAG founder Eric Nemoto and Dorothy Stamp, one of the original members of the group. I didn’t realize how good a job Stamp had done until I talked to her at the opening night reception later.

She plays a beautiful, sickly, needy woman who lacks confidence. In person, she is vivacious, funny and spirited. She says she disagrees with the plot for her heroine. Her character is really not that bad. She appears as the “obake” or ghost.

Nemoto is the proud samurai from a humble heritage who is torn between fidelity to his first wife, to his mother, to his family, and to his new, young bride. Award winning Didi Leong, with a long string of stage and TV credits, plays the samurai’s mother with a convincing use of tiny, geisha steps. Shaula Voge, the second wife, looks so pretty and innocent. She is a senior at Saint Francis High. Well cast.

I must mention the end of the story, which includes a tremendously creative use of the tiny stage and lighting ideas. The creation of the ghost was good. The creation of Purgatory was better.

The play is based on the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, a turn of the century English scholar, who roamed the countryside of

Japan

recording village stories. Playwrite Richard C. Goodman wrote the play based on one of Hearn’s ghost stories from 1901. See http://www.taghawaii.org/04/reawake.html

Alvin Koo has been a writer and public relations practioner in Hawaii for 30 years. His book “Stuff Nobody Told Me” can be found at Amazon.com or the Golden Phoenix bookstore in Honolulu.

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