THEATER REVIEW: IXNAY

Ixnay on the afterlife. Aaron Takahashi stars in latest East West Players production.

Reincarnation can wait – Asian-American style.

Written By: Ed Rampell

Paul Kikuchi’s debut play Ixnay is a charming, delightful, imaginative, droll romp about that rib-tickling topic – death. Or, more precisely, about the afterlife, Eastern style. This new East West Players production joins the ranks of a sub-genre of movies and plays, which are usually comedies (except for those Night of the Living Dead zombie-type pix), about what happens after the Grim Reaper comes a-knocking and it’s time to meet one’s maker, such as Warren Beatty’s 1978 Heaven Can Wait (a remake of 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan) and Frank Capra’s 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart.

After Raymond Kobayashi’s (Aaron Takahashi) car wreck, he gums up the works at Reincarnation Station #92, a sort of Buddhist or Hindu way station on the road to rebirth, by refusing to proceed to his “Next Life.” Like those contrarians, Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener and Nancy Reagan, Kobayashi just says no. Why, pray tell? It turns out that the refuse-nik didn’t enjoy life the first time around, and isn’t too keen on giving it a second chance – especially if he comes back as a Japanese American.

This leads to lots of soul searching about what it means to be an Asian-American. Kobayashi bemoans the role of the model minority, the heavy burden of competitiveness and of being an overachiever. A simple man, Kobayashi is unable to live up to his family’s – and perhaps community’s – stereotypical expectations, making his existence on Earth a living hell.

(I knew a Japanese American woman who had a boring bourgeois job and described the above as being ethnic attributes. As if to prove her point, she was so competitive that she rather remarkably insisted she knew more about films than I. When I reminded her about the many thousands of dollars I’d made covering films in books, publications, a documentary, on the radio, online, etc., and that nobody had ever paid her a red cent for her view of a single movie, she shut up, because, in her materialistic mind set, money trumped all.)

Like the cadavers in Bury the Dead Kobayashi’s passive resistance causes all hell (or heaven, as the case may be) to break out. The holdup wreaks havoc on the other souls in transit to their next life, who are all eager to be born again. Those stuck in a holding pattern include the Chinese-American dentist Dr. Frank Fong (the witty, stereotype spouting Matthew Yang King), Korean-American grandma Grace Kim (humorously played by June Kyoko Lu, whose character packs a wallop – and an even bigger surprise), Filipino hip-hopper Eric Galindo (Dante Basco, who played Rufio in Steven Spielberg’s Hook) and Norton Biggs (Matt Braaten, who amiably and hilariously lampoons the tomfoolery of one of those Asian-phile hakujins -- whites -- smitten by “Yellow Fever” – a favorite EWP target).

And now, a word from our sponsor: The above are joined at the reincarnation center by a character identified as Samoan-American Julie Fotoni. My quibble is not with Ellen D. Williams’ funny portrayal of this character but with the apparent characterization of Fotoni as an Asian American. While Samoans are often lumped into the “Asian/Pacific Islander” category in census-type and other government, etc., records, applications and the like, Samoans are definitely not Asians, nor do they consider themselves to be Asian. They are, like Tahitians and Native Hawaiians, Polynesians, and this point needs to be clarified in the script. Furthermore, there are many more Western Samoans – who live in an independent nation – than so-called “Samoan Americans,” who are from the U.S. territory of American Samoa, where Pago Pago is located. I know, because I lived in both Samoas and have Samoan aiga, or family. (So ixnay on the Asianay for Samoans, especially in a play about ethnic identity – faamolemole, or please.)

Aside from this, Jeff Liu’s deftly directed Ixnay makes a number of extremely pertinent points about race and culture. Of particular interest is Galindo’s droll description of the Asian-American “pecking order” – with Japanese Americans (but where does this leave Okinawans?) at the top and Hmongs at the bottom (although Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino may have elevated their status).

The racialism is brought to the forefront by Tadashi Ozaki, portrayed with panache by the deliciously, deliriously, wickedly wacky Gedde Watanabe. Ozaki-san does a comic spin on the Valet who shows deceased characters their new digs in Hades in Jean-Paul Sartre’s postwar play No Exit. (Upon introducing the newcomers to what will be their hellish chambers for the rest of eternity, they all ask about fire and brimstone, etc., astonishing the Valet who thinks they should, instead, inquire about more practical matters -- such as the plumbing.) Ozaki has his own racist agenda for insisting upon dispatching the reluctant Kobayashi to his next life as a Japanese American again, much to the nonconformist’s chagrin. Ozaki is served – and undermined – by the angelically white clad secretary Reiko Tanaka, fetchingly depicted by Elizabeth Ho, who is anything but ho-hum.

In the lead role, Aaron Takahashi is an unlikely anti-hero; nevertheless, he doggedly sticks to his guns, even when Ozaki pulls ever dirty trick in the Luciferian book to coerce Kobayashi into returning in his mortal coil as another Japanese American. Like the path towards enlightenment, this satori safari leads to Kobayashi attaining a measure of clarity, self-realization and inner peace. Although this is Takahashi’s EWP’s main stage premiere, you may have seen this understated actor in the Asian American Cold Tofu improve troupe, or in Jim Carrey’s movie, Yes Man.

Kurt Boetcher’s set externalizes the whimsy of the playwright’s flights of fancy, with, quite literally, a stairway to heaven, festooned by playful renditions of heavenly clouds, stylized like so many Katsushika Hokusai woodblock waves writ large.

Pasadena-born Kikuchi developed his play in the East West Players’ David Henry Hwang Introduction to Playwriting Workshop. In addition to being filled with imagination and insight, Ixnay also features topical humor, with perhaps the first Obama, octupulets and stimulus package jokes to find their way into a play. If, like Kobayashi, Kikuchi sticks to it, he obviously has a bright future ahead of him as a bard.

It’s the karma of theatergoers who enjoy thought provoking, frothy comedies to amscray to EWP to enjoy Ixnay.

Ixnay is at the East West Players, David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 Judge John Aiso St. in Downtown L.A.’s Little Tokyo, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. through March 15. For more info call 213/625-7000 or log onto info@eastwestplayers.org.