An Ode to Asian Stagecraft In SEE WHAT I WANNA SEE — Review

Off-Broadway

Zachary Noah Piser | Photo: Thomas Brunot

By
Juan A. Ramirez
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September 26, 2024 4:10 PM
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See What I Wanna See, Michael John LaChiusa’s adaptation of three stories by the Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (including “In a Grove,” which inspired the seminal film Rashomon) is perhaps destined to be one of the definitive chamber pieces of musical theatre.

That is both an appraisal and a read.

Its tight narratives, consistent musical tone, and small cast (which only calls for 5 performers) ensure an intimacy that’s rare in the typically brassy form. But it also doesn’t quite work, with two discrete acts, hazily linked to themes of unknowability and personal belief, all but ordaining it to smaller audiences willing to do the work to piece them together.

When it premiered at the Public Theater in 2005, with a cast that included Idina Menzel and Marc Kudisch, it did, however, unleash a gorgeous score that is smart, at times achingly gorgeous and wryly jazzy.

In a small, unfussy production at Out of the Box Theatric’s new West Village home, director Emilio Ramos allows that music to take center stage while providing a conceptual backbone that sensibly connects the disjointed acts and quietly reclaims the work for its all-Asian cast.

The production’s first moments lock everything in: a bunraku puppet (designed by Tom Lee and handled by Nikki Calonge, Takemi Kitamura, and Justin Otaki Perkins) looks out at the audience, then hauntingly peers into the Central Park arch set (by Emmie Finckel). Instantly we’re aware of subjectivity and position.

What the puppet might be witnessing is the contentious murder of a man (Kelvin Moon Loh) in 1951 Manhattan. The events that led to this are contradictorily related by his wife (Theatrely31 alum Marina Kondo), who was present, and a thief (Sam Smiahk) that they met at an after-hours bar. Further confusion comes thanks to accounts from a movie theater janitor (Zachary Noah Piser) and a medium (Ann Sanders, a commanding presence) called in to speak for the deceased. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the ether.

Zachary Noah Piser and Marina Kondo | Photo: Thomas Brunot

Piser shines in the second act as a priest who, losing faith in the months after 9/11, spreads a hoax about a soon-to-come miracle in Central Park. The young actor’s innocent spark lends the disillusionment of that role (originally played by a 51-year-old Henry Stram) a tragic quality; less a tired man aghast at modernity’s horrors than a youthful soul flirting with lifelong amorality.

Each actor returns in a new role: Kondo as a vapid actress (in a perfect ‘02 sparkly halter top, via Siena Zoë Allen’s costuming); Simahk as a sleazy broadcast reporter; Sanders (again, excellent) as the priest’s sick aunt; and, as a homeless former CPA, Loh, with a comic intensity which incidentally channels the glorious fury of Toshiro Mifune, the Japanese actor who played the thief in Rashomon.

There’s a fun, fabular cynicism in the second act that counteracts – and almost outshines – the somberness of the first, even with its hard-boiled noir edge. The creative team leans into that mischief, introducing well-crafted shadow puppets and projections (lit by Kat C. Zhou) and, at one point, having company members create a life-size marionette out of a T-shirt rack and maps of New York.

That ingeniousness is also present in the vignettes that begin each act: a mysterious rendezvous between lovers in feudal Japan, played by Simahk and Kondo (who, by the way, translated her lines in these sections to Japanese.) It uses the inherent subjectivity of eroticism to evoke a pithier take on the impenetrability of reality which the musical courts. Ramos stages these sequences with particular beauty.

Aided by Adam Rothenberg’s burrowing music direction and Paul McGill’s smooth choreography, Ramos develops a visual style that prioritizes feeling over fact, and which serves this often-impassive work exceedingly well. With finely-appointed flourishes of traditional Asian stagecraft, he demonstrates a sensuous hand that could very well help similar pieces in need of gentle, probing guidance.

See What I Wanna See is in performance through September 29, 2024 at 154 Christopher St in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

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Juan A. Ramirez

Juan A. Ramirez writes arts and culture reviews, features, and interviews for publications in New York and Boston, and will continue to do so until every last person is annoyed. Thanks to his MA in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University, he has suddenly found himself the expert on Queer Melodrama in Venezuelan Cinema, and is figuring out ways to apply that.

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Off-Broadway
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