Romantic comedy lovers are in for a treat as a couple of Vietnamese evacuees in an Arkansas refugee camp circa 1975 fall reluctantly in love in Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone, one of East West Players’ all-around best productions in years.

It’s none other than the playwright himself who opens the show with assurances that “all persons appearing in this work are fictitious” and that this “especially goes for any person or persons who could be related to the playwright, specifically his parents, who this play is absolutely not about.”

 A number of things become clear from the get-go: that Nguyen is quite the prankster, that Vietgone’s romantic protagonists will be the farthest thing from fictitious, that the Vietnamese who brought Nguyen into this world could have given David Mamet a lesson in R-rated dialog, and most importantly, that the characters who populate this “entirely fictional” romcom will be as engaging as characters get.

 Alternating between pre-fall-of-Saigon Vietnam and fresh-new-start America, Vietgone introduces not just to Quang (Paul Yen) and Tong (Sylvia Kwan) but to back-story featured players like his wife, her boyfriend, Quang’s refugee camp sidekick Nhan (Scott Ly), Tong’s mom Huong (Jane Lui), assorted Vietnamese-mangling Americans, and the hippies Quang and Nhan encounter on the Easy Rider road trip to California that our hero hopes will be the first step in a return to wife and preschool-age kids in Vietnam.

That we know from the get-go that Quang and Tong will end up together and give life to playwright Nguyen removes any doubt as to whether our hero will make good his plans to reunite with his faraway spouse, though this hardly matters given the great time we’re having along the way.

 Credit playwright Nguyen and musical director Shammy Dee for treating audiences to some of the most thrilling raps since Lin Manuel Miranda revolutionized Broadway with In The Heights, expertly delivered by Yen and Kwan, their voices ingeniously amped by master sound designer John Zalewski the second they start rapping to Dee’s electrifying original music.

There’s also some kung fu ninja combat so dynamically performed by the entire cast that it took two fight choreographers—Thomas Isao Morinaka and Aaron Aoki—to bring it to fist-punching, leg-kicking life.

 Director Jennifer Chang does a terrific job of keeping things moving at a breakneck pace throughout, and her cast rewards her with one memorable performance after another.

Yen’s sexy, sculpted Quang and Kwan’s as-prickly-as-she-is-pretty Tong are everything you want a pair of romantic leads to be, have fiery chemistry together, and rap like nobody’s business, with Yen getting the added bonus of Vietgone’s moving coda, one that not only provides audience members a new perspective on the Vietnam War but allows the actor to age into the Vietnamese-accented second-language-speaker he will eventually become.

Lui, Ly, and Albert Park provide sensational backup in four-to-six distinct roles each, with special snaps to the Lui’s quirky, querulous, cute-as-can-be Huong and her perpetually stoned Flower Girl, Ly’s infectiously appealing sidekick Nahn and his high-flying Hippie Dude, and the especially chameleonlike Park’s adorably redneck Bobby, his hopelessly love-struck Giai, and his practical-joking “Playwright.” (One of Nguyen’s cleverest conceits is to have us hear Bobby’s second-language Vietnamese as pidgin English with an Arkansas twang, and native speakers’ English as nonsense phrases like “Mozerella sticks, tater tot,” when what they’re actually saying is “You saved many lives today.”)

 Scenic and projection designers Kaitlyn Pietras and Jason H. Thompson, costume designer Stephanie A. Nguyen, lighting designer Tom Ontiveros and properties designer Glenn Michael Baker, making Vietgone one of East West Players’ most spectacularly designed productions ever.

 Oh, and director Chang, her cast, and the entire design team deserve major snaps for a week’s worth of classic romantic movie moments, from Titanic to Dirty Dancing to Say Anything.

Jade Cagalawan is stage manager and Edward Khris Fernandez is assistant stage manager.

 As irresistibly entertaining as it is thrillingly innovative and engagingly performed, Vietgone opens East West Players’ 53rd season with a Vietnamese firecracker bang.

East West Players, David Henry Hwang Theatre, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles.
www.eastwestplayers.org

–Steven Stanley
October 26, 2018
Photos: Michael Lamont

Tags: East West Players, Los Angeles Theater Review, Qui Nguyen