The Cambodian genocide may seem the least likely of subject matters for a raucous rock-music comedy, but this is precisely what Lauren Yee has pulled off in Cambodian Rock Band, her most accomplished, fulfilling play to date.

 Not that Yee’s South Coast Repertory World Premiere sidesteps the Khmer Rouge atrocities, particularly those committed at Tuol Sleng Prison, where only seven of 20,000 sent there were said to have survived, a mortality rate due in large part to the infamous Kang Kek Iew, aka Duch (Daisuke Tsuji), the prison’s “meticulous, controlling, and utterly charming” head man.

Still, before the atrocities there was the music, performed by pop stars like Ros Serey Sothea and Sinsamouth and groups like Yee’s fictional Cyclo, five 20somethings aiming to take the 1975 recording world by storm provided the Americans stick around long enough to keep the Khmer Rouge at bay.

A preshow jam introduces us to guitarist Chum (Joe Ngo), bassist Leng (Raymond Lee), vocalist Sothea (Brooke Ishibashi), keyboardist Pou (Jane Lui), drummer Rom (Abraham Kim), and the first of a dozen or so 1970s Cambodian hits and songs by L.A. rock band Dengue Fever that rock the Julianne Argyros Stage like it’s never been rocked before.

Fast forward to 2008 and 51-year-old Chum’s return to Phnom Pen for the first time in thirty years in an effort to convince his American-born daughter Neary (Ishibashi) to give up pursuing war criminals and get down to studying law stateside, and if this means leaving Ted (Lee), her hunky Thai-American coworker-boyfriend behind, so much the better.

 No way, insists Neary, who’s uncovered photographic evidence of an eighth Tuol Sleng survivor, the search for whom seems suddenly a good deal less challenging when Dad lets his tongue slip and everything his daughter has ever thought about him, even something so simple as believing him an only child, is forever changed.

Humor, unexpected as it may be, abounds in Yee’s latest play, from Duch’s description of Phnom Pen as “the Detroit of Southeast Asia” to Chum’s excuse for not letting Neary know he was coming till his arrival at her hotel door (“You know your dad. Cambodian time.”) to quoting Beyonce and referencing Gloria Gaynor when describing his survival skills.

 And music abounds too, including ‘70s Cambodian-language hits like Sinn Sisamouth’s “Champa Battanmbang” and Ros Serey Sothea “Today I Learnt To Drink (Doo Wop)” and Dengue Fever’s “Uku” and “Sni Bong.”

 Then comes Operation Pull Out and a second act about which the less revealed, the better, except to say that if Yee’s brand of whimsy has taken flight in plays like The King Of The Yees and Samsara (and throughout most of Act One), from here on her dramatic talents reign supreme.

It helps enormously that Yee is blessed by a dream cast operating at the peak of their talents under Chay Yew’s inspired direction.

 A sensational Ngo aces older Chum’s English-As-A-Second-Language accent, his resiliency, and his Cambodian charm and younger Chum’s rocker’s exuberance, drawing from his Khmer Rouge-surviving parents’ lives in scenes opposite Tsuji, fabulous and fearsome as our good-natured contemporary host and Chun’s not so friendly scene partner back in the Pot Pol ‘70s.

Ishibashi sings up a storm as Sothea, then stands in terrifically for playwright Yee in father-daughter scenes that echo those in King Of The Yees; the always superb Lee proves himself even more versatile than his previous night-and-day star turns in Office Hour and Vietgone; and Lui and Kim, like Ngo, Ishibashi, and Lee, are not only Grade-A rockers under Matthew MacNelly’s expert musical direction but step in brief cameos as well.

 Scenic design whizzes Takeshi Kata and Se Hyun Oh join forces to take us from recording studio to hotel suite to prison interrogation cell and back, aided every step of the way by David Weiner’s showy-to-stark lighting design, Sara Ryung Clement’s spot-on period polyester and prison drab, and Mikhail Fiksel’s electrifying sound design.

Cambodian Rock Band features Ken Merckz’s fight choreography. Andy Knight is dramaturg. Joshua Marchesi is production manager. Bryan Sommer is stage manager and Kathleen Barrett is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Joanne DeNaut, CSA.

 In what is surely her most challenging play so far, Laurent Yee meets every challenge and then some. Cambodian Rock Band is contemporary theater at is most electrifying, edifying, and emotionally affecting.

South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.
www.scr.org

–Steven Stanley
March 13, 3018
Photos: Jordan Kubat/Tania Thompson/SCR

Tags: Cambodian Genocide, Lauren Yee, Orange County Theater Review, Pol Pot, South Coast Repertory, Tuol Sleng Prison