“MUTT” at Impact Theatre—laughs, topic, and a great cast make it worth it

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2014-05-27 15:09Z by Steven

 

“MUTT” at Impact Theatre—laughs, topic, and a great cast make it worth it

Examinier.com
2014-05-12

John A. McMullen II
Oakland Theater Examiner

Sometimes a mediocre play jumps to life when you assemble an extraordinary cast with a primo director.

Christopher Chen’s “MUTT” at Impact Theatre means to be sardonic and poignant. Some of the scenes are funny and quirky and insightful, but it is overwritten without much change of mood.

The idea is that the Repubs need a multi-racial candidate to win back the votes. They introduce a new term to this Caucasian audience member: “hapa,” i.e., a person of mixed race, seemingly with a necessary Asian component. They vett a half-Chinese, half Caucasian Congressman played by Matt Lai—an actor who has the extraordinary ability of naturalness, whose every move and line seems as if it just occurred to him, which is my functional definition of extraordinary acting, the kind you see in the cinema. Lai’s Congressman character doesn’t pass the Conservatives’ test because he wants to be himself and not-so-moldable, so they find a former soldier-hero in the stolid-acting Michael Uv Kelley, whose character is an even more mixed race and whatever-they-want him-to-be malleable…

Read the entire review here.

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