Here’s a blast of rude, irreverent humor mixed with heartfelt drama and spiced with hip-hop. I’m talking about Vietgone, the play by Qui Nguyen which has just kicked off East West Players’s 53rd season (EWP is the nation’s longest-running Asian-American theatre, by the way). Nguyen has been produced by EWP before; he wrote the book for the company’s 2011 production of “Krunk Fu Battle Battle.” The playwright also appeared on stage to introduce Vietgone in hilarious and rambunctious fashion. He should do a solo show one day. His play roughly tells his parents’ story: having fled Viet Nam when that country fell to the communists, they met in a 1975 relocation camp in Arkansas, fell in love, eventually married and settled in the USA. Thus Vietgone is very much a refugee’s tale told from an Asian viewpoint, but in a fresh and unexpected way. Nguyen has dispensed with realism and opted for a satirical approach to his story-telling. Quang (Paul Yen) and Tong (Sylvia Kwan) are unlike most Asian-American characters we have seen before. Impolite, profane, sexy and fiery, they shatter all previous stereotypes in bold and gleeful fashion---especially Tong. No meek, obedient, little Asian doll is she, as evidenced by the rap song she belts out when she thinks her romance with Quang has sputtered. “Love is just some bullshit story/a poetic veneer when we get horny…I just needed your dick to scratch a little itch/If you wanna fall in love, go find some other bitch…I’m not some little girl dreaming for her prince/I can save my own kingdom, I’m a badass bitch!” Tong’s mother Huong (Jane Lui), who is also in the camp with her, is every bit as bawdy and cynical when it comes to men. Where they differ is in their feelings about Viet Nam. Huong dreams of returning to their homeland one day; Tong scoffs at that and insists they must put down roots in the USA, make a new start there. Quang is equally conflicted as well. A former pilot in the South Vietnam air force (having trained in the USA), he was obliged to flee Vietnam when his side was defeated---and to leave his wife and two children behind. The pain he feels at being separated from home and family is both palpable and relevant at this particular time in our history. Quang’s love for Tong further complicates his state of mind, drives him a bit nuts, really. To work off his anguish and confusion, he often takes to his motorcycle for full-throttle trips into the American heartland, accompanied by his Vietnamese sidekick Nhan (Scott Ly). These trips, enhanced by video projection, garish lighting and a rock score (by Shammy Dee), lead to encounters with redneck bikers, hippie pot-heads, and (in a fantasy sequence) Ninja warriors. Some of the encounters are violent, some surreal, some comical. Always, though, the point of view is from an Asian vantage. Instead of white folks leading the charge and observing the foibles of the colored folks, it’s the other way around. The Asians are always the heroes in Vietgone. Nguyen’s play has an epic quality; its story goes back and forth in time in non-linear fashion, and it often breaks into song at unexpected times (just like an opera.) But such is Nguyen’s gift as a writer, I was always caught up in the flow of his tale and in the struggles of his conflicted characters to find a place in a strange new world. I was also much impressed with the work of its five-person cast (three of whom play multiple roles) and of its director, Jennifer Chang, who kept this speeding-train of a play from going off the rails.
