Far East

Culturally, East -- specifically Japan -- is as far as can be from the "normal," Midwest country club world of Lt."Sparky" Watts. Having fallen in love with a young Japanese who waits tables at his newly-assigned base, 1954, he's trying to "Orient" himself. Enthusiastic Jason Kuykendall gentles a bit the brash WASP whose military stint began as an entrance qualification for Harvard Business School. Adding to the "Madame Butterfly" situation are parallels to some in cited Michener novels and films of the period, especially "From Here to Eternity." Sparky's superior, Anderson (earnest Jeff Sugarman), longs to fly -- literally -- from his deskwork and would like Sparky to follow. From personal experience, he understands but worries about the social and career implications of Sparky's infatuation with an Asian woman. Anderson's wife, played ideally by Eliza Foss, smart in period clothes (sexy as an officer's wife would dare), misses her career and former social world. Both Andersons develop more interest in Sparky than they sustain in each other, and hers dooms Sparky's would-be marriage, as well as her own actual one.

A subplot involves Sparky's roommate Bob (strong Scott C. Reeves), who represents a homosexual dilemma common to the time, which the playwright resolves in novel fashion. Like the songs Gurney uses, characters and plot lines may be familiar, but their renditions are pleasing. And East does meet West in staging. Constance Boardman is the Bunraku benshi or narrator, sitting geisha-like aside from the action she describes (so well). She also represents Sparky's unseen lover, recites the lines of the minor characters (represented by stagehands when their physical presence is needed), and uses Kabuki lacquered wood clappers to mark scenic and mood changes, with a gong sounding at major moments.

As in Noh theater, scenery -- mostly sliding white paper screens -- is minimal, as are furnishings. But the intensity of the acting maximizes what might easily have been hackneyed interpretations, just as sounds and lighting seem to flow from the nature of events and emotions. In other words, Victoria Holloway's direction makes what could have come across as an attempt at an overpacked domestic-military semi-tragedy seem a natural breeze of a drama. The play reproduces a slice of its era's global Americana, well worth sampling.