A New York cast and production team bring Los Angeles audiences the World Premiere latest from Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang and Tony-winning composer-lyricist Jeanine Tesori, the crowd-pleasing East-meets-West “play with a musical” Soft Power, as audacious in concept as it is for the most part effective in execution.

 Francis Jue stars DHH himself, summoned in the year 2016 to the Dragon Media head Xue Xing’s (Conrad Ricamora) Hollywood office to discuss a possible Sino-American co-production.

Writer and producer clash from the get-go, as when the latter suggests that the series eschew an American-style happy ending and have its unhappily married leads “stick with their mistake,” Chinese-style.

 Such a solution has, after all, worked out just fine for married-with-daughter Xin, and it’s certainly done the trick for Bill and Hillary Clinton, the latter of whom will be at L.A.’s Music Center hosting a post-performance meet-and-greet that David, Xin, and Xin’s younger American girlfriend Zoe (Alyse Alan Louis) hope to crash.

The show in question turns out to be The King And I, prompting David to wonder aloud whether the time hasn’t come for a musical in which a Westerner learned from an Easterner, and not the other way round?

For its first half hour or so, Soft Power is a straight play so thoroughly delightful it could well go one for another hour or more with no complaints from this reviewer.

 Co-writers Hwang (who wrote the play and lyrics) and Tesori (music and additional lyrics) have something far more daring in mind, for it’s about at this point that a traumatic event sends David into a musical Fantasyland that would do Rodgers and Hammerstein proud had they written about a Chinese visitor to the exotic nation of America and not of a English visitor to the exotic kingdom of Siam.

 The traveler in question is Xue, whose arrival at “Hollywood Airport” soon has him threatened at gunpoint (it is the USA after all) when a helpful, pistol-toting young American named Bobby Bob (Austin Ku) rescues him from attacker Randy Ray (Raymond J. Lee) and before long Xue finds himself dining at McDonalds with none other than Hillary (Louis) herself.

Could this be the start of a relationship as meaningful as that of Anna and The King of Siam?

Soft Power The Musical offers numerous delights, beginning with its imagining of an America divided between hip-hoppers and Fred-and-Gingers, all of them blond, all of them toting guns.

 A dozen or so songs span multiple genres, from rap to country to traditional Chinese with hints of Sondheim and Meredith Willson thrown into the R-&H-esque mix, among them Xin’s Chinese language lesson (Hillary proves herself incapable of hearing tones), an explanation of the American voting system by the Chief Justice (Jon Hoche), a salute to American gun power by the newly elected Veep (Lee), and a couple of Hillary showstoppers, one lamenting her election loss, the other saluting democracy.

Though for the most part a terrific cross-cultural primer, not all of Soft Power works as well as it could. Once abandoned, Soft Power The Play returns only briefly, perhaps too briefly. An Act Two-opening “50th Anniversary Retrospective” talk show is amusing but could easily be cut. Though a point is made of The King And I native’s “stupid accents,” everyone in Soft Power The Musical speaks the same unaccented American English. And if the Chinese do indeed succeed in teaching the “barbarian” Americans a lesson in making peace, it’s Hillary who ends up saluting the American ideal of democracy in the show’s eleventh-hour number, so who really is teacher and who gets taught?

 There can be no quibbling about Leigh Silverman’s effervescent direction or about Ricamora’s charismatic, instantly likable star turn as Xin.

Jue’s DHH steal scenes right and left as did his King Of The Yees and Louis’s powerhouse Hillary and her Zoe are equally ab-fab, with terrific supporting work being done by Hoche (who doubles as a homophobic Tony Manero), Kendyl Ito as Xin’s daughter Jing, Lee’s double-delightful Randy Ray and Veep, and an especially snaps-worthy Ku’s irresistible Bobby Bob.

 Triple-threat ensemble members Billy Bustamante, Jon Hoche, Kendyl Ito, Austin Ku, Raymond J. Lee, Jaygee Macapugay, assistant dance captain Daniel May, Paul HeeSang Miller, Kristen Faith Oei, Maria-Christina Oliveras (Campaign Manager), and dance captain Geena Quintos deliver the goods again and again to choreographer Sam Pinkleton’s supremely eclectic dance moves.

 Scenic designer David Zinn, costume designer Anita Yavich, lighting designer Mark Barton, hair and wig designer Tom Watson, and makeup designer Angelina Avallone play it straight for the first half hour, then let their imaginations run wild at the Shanghai Airport, at a Budweiser-pillared White House, and above all at a McDonalds whose chandelier-topped statues and short-shorts-sporting roller-skating waiters must be seen to be believed.

 Soft Power sounds splendid throughout thanks to music supervisor Chris Fenwick and L.A.-based music director David O, with dialect-coaching kudos to Joel Goldes and Joy Lanceta Coronel and fight direction by Steve Rankin.

Soft Power is produced in association with East West Players and The Curran. David Lurie-Perret is production stage manager. Kara Guy is Zoe/Hillary understudy. Trevor Salter and Emily Stillings are swings.

Like all out-of-town tryouts, Soft Power could stand some tweaking if Broadway is its goal, but for originality alone it scores a bulls-eye. Add to a smart satirical script, songs that score just as many laughs, and stellar performances by a cast too often not given the spotlight they deserve, and Soft Power packs a powerful entertainment punch.

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles.
www.CenterTheatreGroup.org

–Steven Stanley
May 16, 2018
Photos: Craig Schwartz Photography

Tags: Ahmanson Theatre, Center Theatre Group, David Henry Hwang, Jeanine Tesori, Los Angeles Theater Review