A SWEET AND SOUR ASIAN COMING-OUT STORY
Cast of well-played characters draws audience into both comedy and family drama
Ai Yah! Lunchbox Theatre has a winner in Dale Lee Kwong ’s new comedy Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets.
At the top of the show, we learn that Ai Yah! is a catch-all Chinese phrase. It means many different things depending on inflection and accompanying hand gestures.
Before the show’s 65 minutes is up we also learn about customs surrounding Chinese New Year and see how difficult it can still be for some parents to accept that their child is gay. It also becomes abundantly clear how a skilled writer and director can make a coming-out story both funny and poignant.
Jade Wong (Kelsey Verzotti) has been in a two-year relationship with Jennifer Smith (Jamie Matchullis), who is pressuring Jade to tell her parents so they don’t have to lead double lives.
To show she is inching toward being open about her sexuality and pushing the relationship to another level, Jade gives Jennifer a key to her apartment, telling her which days and times not to be there. Her father brings food over on certain days and her mother comes to collect laundry on others. Jennifer, not realizing the significance of Chinese New Year’s Eve, arrives on the morning that Jade’s father Charlie (Ben Wong) is bringing over a treat for his daughter.
What director Trevor Rueger stages is pure farce with Jennifer and Charlie just missing each other as they move the box of barbecue buns around the living room.
There’s a mischievous glint in Ben Wong ’s eyes so when Charlie invites Jennifer to eat Chinese New Year’s Eve supper with them, there’s the suggestion he knows Jennifer and Jade are more than just friends. This allows Kwong and Rueger to go for more farce when Jennifer and Jade arrive for supper because no one has told the mama, Lillian Wong (Chantelle Han), about the supper guest.
Kwong throws in some double entendre which goes blissfully
over the scowling Han’s head, but not over Charlie’s or the audience’s.
It’s great fun and the laughs are fresh and frequent until the truth is spilled.
It is to the credit of writer, director and especially the cast that all laughter ceases instantly, creating a vacuum of silence. There is absolutely no humour in Lillian’s reaction. Han makes Lillian’s crushing disapproval and disappointment completely palpable.
Even when Charlie tries to lighten the blow and mend fences, it only makes Lillian’s pain greater and more obvious.
Before the situation is resolved, and beautifully so, Kwong shows just how great a generation gap can be.
As a writer, Kwong is fair to both Jade and Lillian She makes us see why they feel the way they do and why they are so reluctant to be the one to acquiesce.
It’s the same care and honesty Kwong used when Jennifer and Jade presented their arguments as to whether they should be more open with their sexuality or continue their closeted lives and once again when Charlie tries to explain to Lillian why they must accept their daughter’s sexuality.
Each time, it’s like a ping-pong match. It’s easy to find yourself changing allegiances because the arguments are all so heartfelt.
Because Ai Yah! Sweet & Sour Secrets is not meant to be a lecture or diatribe, Kwong finds ways to get the audience laughing again primarily because she and her actors have made us care about these four people. We want them to be a family.
From Terry Gunvordahl’s set and lighting to Aidan Lytton’s sound design and Rebecca Toon’s costumes, this is a production that complements the writing, staging and performances.
One small drawback to the play is that Wong and Han are too young to be playing the parents. Lillian talks about having seen her mother go to a labour camp during the Cultural Revolution in China which, even if it was at the end of the Revolution, Lillian and Charlie would be in their late 50s or early 60s.
We simply don’t have an abundance of Asian actors of that generation and that’s a shame. Until we do, we need younger actors like Han and Wong who can portray the emotions, if not the age.
Ay Yah! Sweet & Sour Secrets runs at Lunchbox until March 10.