THEATRE REVIEW: BROWN BALLS
5 MAY/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5


When it comes right down to it, every one of us has to battle a host of stereotypes if we want to carve out a personal niche as a home for our true self. That said, those who are part of a visual minority face even greater challenges than those of us who represent the various sub-strata of broadly drawn norms, comprised of skin colour, gender, sexuality and a host of other things that should in reality be dismissed as personal modifiers rather than arbiters.

Not surprisingly, those defined almost solely by race often choose to fight back — often from a place of rage, sometimes from a place of sadness but always from a place of humanity. Happily, in celebration of Asian Heritage Month, the folks at fu-Gen Asian Canadian Theatre Company have settled on edgy humour as the tone for their examination and rebuttal of the stereotypes faced by males of Asian extraction in our civilization.

Actually, make that males of East Asian and South East Asian, for as is made abundantly clear in fu-GEN's production of BROWN BALLS, which opened in the Factory Studio Tuesday, the "Asian" label covers a broad spectrum of humanity indeed. So playwright Byron Abalos narrows his focus, choosing to dwell on the experiences of three young Canadian men from diverse Asian backgrounds. Paul Jeong or PJ (played by Sean Baek) traces his roots to Korea, while John Paul Kung or JP (Richard Lee) is of Chinese descent. As for Charles Crawford (David Yee), his background is mixed, son of a Scottish father and a Filipino mother.

After setting the scene with a bizarre and often very funny evocation of the Sunday night rush at the only Chinese eatery in a Jewish 'hood, the trio tackles what is to prove the main course for the evening, taking their audience hostage and serving up a whole plateful of Asian Male stereotypes, most of them shaped by a long and often colour-miscoded relationship with Hollywood.

With Yee doing Charlie Chan, Lee essaying Fu Manchu and Baek covering off on a pantheon of martial arts stars like Bruce Lee, they eviscerate and reconstruct the image of the Asian male in Western civilization in an attempt to redeem it. Under the free-wheeling direction of Nina Lee Aquino, this is an often free form affair with few barriers between the action on stage and the audience. Indeed, as the 85-minute show evolves, the audience becomes a principal player, providing not just statistical fodder for the performers but comedic fodder as well. One might also add that there are definitely no sacred cows here, but then as they clearly point out, that is another part of Asia entirely.

But as its title implies, this is often edgy stuff, as the personality of each of the characters evolves, with Baek staking out turf as the stereotypical young Asian Canadian on the make, Lee, the equally familiar driven-to-succeed Asian Canadian scholar and Yee, the passive Asian American gay man, even as they rail against those stereotypes.

Working on a slick set created by designer Jackie Chau, in a successful creative collaboration with electronic whiz kids Aaron Kelly and Shawn Henry, BROWN BALLS is an often slick and entertaining affair, although in the climactic shift from comedy to drama, a little more care in separating the performer from the performance might be advisable.

Still, it's an an often thought-provoking and almost always entertaining evening, underlining the fact that the best way to debunk stereotypes is to ignore them and make contact with the human who happens to be wearing them.