'Far East' never finds rhythm for cultural mix

The play has ambition, but some Eastern staging devices don't translate into the play's Western framework.

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 15, 2000

SARASOTA -- Far East is set in Japan, but it's really about Vietnam -- or the attitudes that led to the disastrous American involvement there. The time is 1954, and the French have just lost the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Though the U.S. Navy officers of A.R. Gurney's latest play are stationed at Tokyo Bay, they are increasingly preoccupied with activities such as charting the dimensions of Haiphong and Da Nang harbors and providing support to secret military advisers in South Vietnam.

In one way, it's typical territory for Gurney, who has made a specialty of constructing well-made comedy-dramas about the American gentry in plays such as The Dining Room and The Cocktail Hour. With Far East, now at Florida Studio Theatre, he adds to his repertoire of WASP prototypes in a portrait of a self-contained community of peacetime military people a long way from home.

Gurney also retells that old story of East and West, Madame Butterfly. His Pinkerton, the bounder of Puccini's opera, is Lt. (j.g.) "Sparky" Watts, a tennis-playing Princetonian and scion of a Milwaukee brewing clan, whose Butterfly (never seen) is a Japanese waitress at the officers' club.

Watts (Jason Kuykendall) comes under the mentorship of Capt. James Anderson, a career flier. Despite their differences -- Anderson (Jeff Sugarman) is a desk-bound Naval Academy grad hankering to get back on an aircraft carrier; Watts is fresh out of Officer Candidate School and can't wait to get his hitch over so he can go to Harvard Business School -- the two men bond. Anderson once was in love with an Asian woman, too.

The supposed allure of Asian womanhood rankles Anderson's sexy young wife, Julia, who is idling her life away with flower arranging, dancing classes and drinking gin and tonic. "I do wish, just once, you could tell me what's so wonderful about these Asian women," she says to her husband.

Julia (Eliza Foss) takes a more than platonic interest in the handsome lieutenant and tries to break up his relationship with the Japanese woman.

If the stock military-base triangle -- commander, frustrated wife, dashing junior officer -- was the only thing on its mind, then Gurney's play would be little more than a soap opera. There's a subplot about a closeted gay ensign that seems like a gratuitous attempt to work in a contemporary twist.

But Far East is not without ambition. It includes a veritable roll call of cultural touchstones on the theme of East vs. West, from James Michener's The Bridges at Toko-Ri to an out-of-leftfield reference to Quemoy and Matsu, the Taiwanese islands that loomed large in the Kennedy-Nixon debates.

Then there's the playwright's use of traditional Japanese staging devices from Kabuki and Noh drama. How they mesh, or don't mesh, with Western theatrical conventions constitute the most problematic aspect of the production, directed by Victoria Holloway.

A character called the Reader, played by kimono-clad Constance Boardman, assumes many voices. She also signals shifts in place and time by loudly clapping wood blocks in a manner that quickly becomes annoying. Alvon Griffin chimes in with drums, wood flute and other Asian musical touches, in stark contrast to nostalgic American pop tunes such as Jo Stafford's rendition of You Belong to Me.

There's a choppiness to the multicultural mix in Far East, and the company never finds a rhythm together. Wednesday's performance was marred by botched recorded sound cues in the opening moments of the play and a ceiling fan that creaked noisily throughout the second act.

Theater review