- OTHER MEDIA
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- review in San Francisco Bay Guardian
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- Racism and homophobia confine like the bars of the prison cell where
a profoundly lonely 19-year-old, John Lee (played by Jason Wong with intriguing,
unfolding complexity), sits for the murder of his lover (John Atwood),
having confessed to firing six bullets into his body in a public bathroom
in London. Lee, the son of a Singaporean immigrant and restaurant owner,
barely registers any hardship in his incarceration, having long been shunned
twice over – as Asian and gay – by the British society he grew
up in. Instead he sits quietly folding red paper cranes. Porcelain brought
American playwright Chay Yew instant award-winning recognition when it
premiered, in London in 1992 (it had its Bay Area premiere the following
year, in a production at Theatre Rhinoceros). This acclaim clearly had
less to do with its fairly conventional plot devices, half-developed subthemes,
or occasionally amateurish passages than its daring look at the interplay
of racism and homophobia, including their internalized dimensions, in the
life and mind of its protagonist. Crowded Fire opens its ninth season with
Yew's play, and director Mei Ann Teo gives Porcelain an elegantly designed,
smoothly executed production, though one lacking enough in necessary intensity
that the play's clunkier aspects can overwhelm it. (Avila)
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