Reviews excerpted from
San Diego Union Tribune

Reviews are available in their entirety at http://www.uniontrib.com.

The Gate of Heaven
Old Globe Theatre
3/9/96

"The Gate of Heaven opens dramatically with the re-enactment of a little-known episode of World War II history: A member of a segregated Japanese American army unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, helps liberate survivors of the Dachau concentration camp...

"From that fact-based scene, co-authors and actors Lane Nishikawa and Victor Talmadge fashioned the often moving story of a 50-year friendship...

"Sometimes the images are fuzzy, mere outlines of figures posed to make thematic point. But at its best, The Gate of Heaven puts flesh on the intersecting complexities of family racism, militarism and patriotism.."

Ann Marie Welsh, San Diego Union Tribune

Exit the Dragon
IMERG, Inc.
10/4/96

"Its title nicely inverting the Bruce Lee epic, the breezy hour-long Dragon accomplishes two big things. In something of the style of Robert Townsend's film Hollywood shuffle, it up-ends a slew of Asian American archetypes and stereotypes. And it affords its performers a clever showcase, showing not only what theyre up against, but what they can do if given the chance...

"Dragon is presented by actor Ming-Na Wen...The show, which has played Berkeley and Hollywood, is no mere vanity project...it's theatrical proof that three divergently talented performers can turn their own Hollywood shuffles into something engagingly stageworthy."

Michael Phillips, San Diego Union Tribune

Golden Child
by David Henry Hwang
South Coast Repertory Theatre/Public Theatre
1/14/97

"It's disappointing...to find Golden Child on the impersonal personal side...The play is nicely crafted and often witty, and directory James Lapine's coproduction of the Public Theater and South Coast Repertory casts a handsome series of golden shadows. Yet Hwang may have smoothed out too many rough edges. His play lacks a sense of urgency and focus, of idosyncratic thinking and feeling. Without it, even a good writer's family stories can go only so far...

"The Hwang script I like best remains The Dance and the Railroad, another play (like Golden Child) essentially comic in its energy despite the characters' despair. In that piece Hwang took a bit of 19th Century American history -- the building of the US rail lines -- and personalized it, memorably. That's what's missing in Golden Child, despite uniformly good performances and a lovely look: a sense of a writer responding from the gut to his ancestral life story...."

Michael Phillips, San Diego Union Tribune

F.O.B.
by David Henry Hwang
Asian American Repertory Theatre
2/14/97

"What's notable about F.O.B., David Henry Hwang's first play...is its liveliness and good humor. F.O.B. is far less elaborate than Hwang's later M. Butterfly--something understandable in a three-actor script whose first performance was in a Stanford University dorm in 1979...

"Playwright Hwang has spoken of the influence of Asian American writers Maxine Hong Kingston and Frank Chin on F.O.B.'s two legendary figures. BUt could Sam Shepard also be a factor here?...F.O.B. remains illuminating in what it shows about cultures in conflict and the immigrant experience.

"It's a fine show: small and lively and to the point."

Christopher Schneider, San Diego Union-Tribune

Tea
by Velina Hasu Houston
Asian American Repertory Theatre
5/24/97

"Houston's four living characters typically maintain a calm facade, even when acknowledging their harsh lives as Japanese wives of American-born military personnel, living on a base near Junction City, Kan...

"In exploring the feelings of alienation, resentment and anger among these women, who have renounced their culture to wildly varying degrees, playwright Houston sometimes grinds her metaphors and similes into a powder ("let me smell the confusion of your Amerasian skin"). But Tea has the tang of fully felt autobiography, as well as a nicely judged blend of comedy and drama.

" The ensemble work is likewise nicely judged...Another step forward for the promising Asian American Rep."

Michael Phillips, San Diego Union Tribune

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