It’s risky business playing with stereotypes. The trick is finding the balance between sending them up, yet recognizing the kernels of truth from which they come.
King of Yees, which had its Canadian premier Friday evening at Gateway Theatre, deftly walks that line — for the most part.
The “madcap adventure” as the program describes it, plays on various cliches about Chinese culture as it manifests itself in North America, but it does so with heart and a certain authenticity. A scene when two Asian actors playing Asian actors are trying to find the right way to say the word “Chinese” is hilarious.
However, there are moments, either because of forced acting or a lack of flow in the script, where the play gets clunky and the suspension of disbelieve drops.
King of Yeesopens with a young woman, Lauren, played by Andrea Yu, staging a play she wrote about her father and life in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
As she works with her two Asian-American actors (affording plenty of great quips about type-casting in the theatre business) her dad, Larry, wonderfully played by Gateway’s artistic director Jovanni Sy, struts across the stage talking on his cell phone, telling whoever, he’s in the middle of Lauren’s play. In other words, this work is operating on many levels.
King of Yees, written by Lauren Yee, not only follows her own journey as she re-connects with her father and her culture, it also parallels the politics of the Bay area. In the play, Lauren’s father is desperate to retain some connection to his Chinese ancestry and pass that on to his daughter. This means trying to maintain the Yee Association — which, after all, has to compete with the Wong Association.
This also means working tirelessly as a volunteer for Leland Yee, a senator from San Francisco, simply because they share the same last name.
And here’s where fiction meets fact. Leland Yee is an actual politician who is currently serving time in a Texas jail on corruption charges. Shrimp Boy, another character in the play, is also a real Asian gangster, also in jail in part in connection with Leland Yee’s indictment.
And if that’s not reality enough, early on, an actor planted in the audience, jumps up and starts challenging the playwright on the fact shes failed to address the issues of affordable housing, the gentrification of the Chinatown area and misogyny of all-male Chinese associations.
But there’s no danger of this feeling like the 6 o’clock news. In the second act, the play launches into full-on fable, with Lauren (the character) encountering mythical creatures, answering riddles and seeking the three magical ingredients she needs to open the doors to connect with her father.
It’s an ambitious project to bring together so many diverse elements and, for the most part, it works. But when it doesn’t, it becomes the very cliche it aims to ridicule.
King of Yees runs at the Gateway Theatre until Oct. 22.
