As a new-coming view of Vietnamese Americans in but mainly after the fall of Saigon, Vietgone is a welcome change from stereotyped portrayals of Asian-Americans. Its author has said he’s written a sex comedy but Brian Balcom, who directs it at American Stage, sees it as an epic journey of migration to a new world, themed with bravery, resilience, and love. It hasn’t the overwhelming rap of a Hamilton, yet music and lyrics move the drama. Vietgone takes place from just before 1975 and the fall of Saigon, to August of 2015, as the playwright gets final input for his play. In between, scenes shift from present to the last days of independent Viet Nam. Then comes the main characters’ stay in and around various Army camp refugees’ quarters up to the input-interview 40 years later. Flashbacks and forwards swiftly propel the action but also allow all but the two romantic leads to play multiple characters in scene changes. Handsome Jeff Kin plays brave Quang, who rescued hundreds by helicopter but got himself scuttled. Having left wife and two children behind, he spends most of his time and effort dutifully trying to get back to Nam. He’s changed by his falling in love with Tong. Sami Ma plays her as a toughly independent minded but practical woman, sexually attractive and attracted, caring of her mother Huong (Jodi Kimura, cantankerous, flirty). Quang and Tong make up the central love story. All but the central couple nicely play multiple roles, including their relatives and best friends, hippies, rednecks, suitors of Tong. (This includes an American Guy, who I think should have been played by a Caucasian, but such effective satire would have enlarged the cast and cost more.) With constant stress on the period being portrayed, there’s a silly fight scene with ninjas that, even well executed, to me breaks the mood. There may be young audiences who don’t “get” ninjas at all. I also wondered why there’s never a sign that Viet Nam was a French colony up until the war and surely had some effects on the country and its culture. Music is effectively conceived but may be a tad monotonous when backing long monologues. The entire wide stage has multiple uses—projected, realistic, symbolic. Costumes are period-perfect-often-overdone but a supposedly important message on a tee shirt can’t be seen because the shirt’s folded up too quickly. A final scene is a wonderful surprise. Director Brian Balcom makes it seem inevitable, just as he indeed clarifies Qui Nguyen’s intricately structured play throughout.
