‘Vietgone’ is a hilarious, edgy and unforgettable road trip
Badass motorbike- riding refugees roar onto the stage and into our hearts in “Vietgone.”
One of the most rollicking culture clash comedies ever, “Vietgone” slaps racial stereotypes and mawkish immigrant tropes upside the head. Hard. Exuberantly directed by Jaime Castaneda in its Bay Area premiere at American Conservatory Theater’s Strand, after making a splash in Orange County, Ashland, Oregon, and New York, “Vietgone” is a wild and woolly road trip that will defy your expectations over and over again.
As the character known as The Playwright (Jomar Tagatac) puts it, the key figures in this trippy tale are his parents, the handsome and heroic Quang (the charismatic James Seol) and the beautiful and bitter Tong (a sharp turn by Jenelle Chu), two Vietnamese exiles rolling through America in the ’ 70s. Be forewarned that they say stuff like: “Damn, there’s a lotta white people up in here.”
In other words, they partake in a freewheeling hiphop inflected patois that’s more “Drunk History” than “Miss Saigon.”
In the hell- for- leather spirit of “Hamilton,” playwright Qui Nguyen wildly crosscuts between politics and pop culture with devastatingly funny effects.
Tong scoffs at love because she’s been scarred by the carnage back home. Quang believes he must return to Vietnam to save his family, even if that’s impossible. Huong (Cindy Im, left) embraces her daughter Tong (Jenelle Chu) in Qui Nguyen’s “Vietgone,” playing at the Strand Theater in San Francisco.
They have made it to America but both are prisoners of war on the inside.
Nguyen also cleverly captures the confusion of the hyphenated- American, those of us always having to prove ourselves to one sector or another. The Playwright grows up American but it’s not until he knows the story of Vietnam that he finds his voice.
Meta-theatricality is just part of the ecosystem here, much like ninjas, cheesy ’80s movie montages and raucous 21st- century obscenities. The rowdy sense of absurdity casts the grim realities of the immigrant experience into high relief.
Cindy Im, for one, shamelessly hunts for yuks as Tong’s henpecking but also man-famished mother, Huong. Such pedal-to-themetal irreverence is a real delight in the era of Trump, with its heightened sense of racial anxiety.
While the text sometimes overreaches its grasp, this inventive, rap-fueled narrative is a hoot and a half. Politically correct it isn’t. But you will laugh as
hard as you think. That’s all that really matters, even if the dialogue isn’t quite as clever as the hip-hop riffs and the double casting gets confusing.
Besides, the flat- out exquisite final scene makes up for all of the flaws twice over. In the end, The Playwright returns for a jolting play- within- a- play twist that makes us free fall from crying with laughter to just plain- old crying. Dirty diapers, assimilation and family pride are all in the mix in a closer you may never forget. The last 20 minutes of this show are so indelibly human it reminds us why we go to the theater in the first place, to feel more alive.