Broadway vet Sarah Porkalob pays loving tribute to her feisty Filipina grandmother while bringing to vivid life more than two dozen finely delineated characters and showing off exquisite three-octave pipes in her much lauded solo show Dragon Lady, now paying the most entertaining and compelling of visits to Westwood’s Geffen Playhouse.

The Dragon Lady in question is Maria Senora Porkalob, about to celebrate her 60th surrounded by her large extended family and getting the party started with a karaoke rendition of “House Of The Rising Sun,” its lyrics tweaked to better tell her own story (“There is a house … in the Philippines…”), its sultry opening stanzas segueing into a hip-hop beat cueing us in from the get-go that Grandma Maria is a force to be reckoned with.

So is Porkalob, transforming herself into her Tagalog-accented “Lola,” who at age eighteen found herself a nightclub chanteuse at a Manila bar frequented by American sailors and Filipino gangsters like the one who promised her the world only to leave her lying naked on her doorstep.

Relief arrived in the person of an American serviceman with an odd Hungarian last name who married her, brought her back to the U.S. with him, and several years later divorced her, leaving his wife’s eldest child, a then 13-year-old Maria (Porkalob’s mother), to fend for herself and her preteen siblings with no food in the house and the electricity turned off while Mama Maria went off gallivanting with who knows who.

This childhood trauma gives multihyphenate Porkalob the chance to vanish into not only into Maria Jr. but also Maria’s cute-as-buttons preteen brothers Junior and Charlie, who in borrowed boy scout uniforms trek five miles from their trailer park home to solicit food “donations” from folks only too happy to aid children in need, unaware that the children in question were standing right before them.

It’s a sequence that’s both hilarious and heartbreaking, adjectives that apply equally to the entirety of Porkalob’s self-penned opus, impeccably directed by Andrew Russell, stunningly performed by the most extraordinary of leading ladies, and backed by live musicians Jimmy Austin, Peter Irving, and Mickey Stylin at the top of their game.

I must admit to having found myself somewhat confused about the chronology of the events that unfold in Dragon Lady’s second act, but other than that, it’s clear that Porkalob’s solo show has been finely tuned by both performer-writer and director since its 2018 debut.

Dragon Lady looks drop-dead gorgeous too on Randy Wong-Westbrooke’s crimson-hued, Chinese dragon-themed nightclub set, dramatically lit by Spense Matubang.

Last but not least, Pete Irving’s lilting original songs join such well-known hits as “Blue Bayou,” “Holding Out For A Hero,” and The Animals aforementioned bluesy folk-rock standard.

Rick Carvalho is production stage manager and Rebecca K. Hsia is assistant stage manager.

Sara Porkalob may have made quite a name for herself when she starred in Broadway’s recent 1776 revival, but it’s Dragon Lady, the first installment of a three-part trilogy, that reveals the depth and breadth of her talents. Expect to be blown away.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood.
www.geffenplayhouse.com

–Steven Stanley
September 11, 2024
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles Theater Review, Sara Porkalob