Fast Company

Play
by Carla Ching

With Theresa Nguyen (Blue), Michael Hisamoto (H), Tyler Simahk (Francis), Lin-Ann Ching Kocar (Mabel)

It’s too complicated to really figure out what’s going on in this Chinese-American family of shysters, but it’s clear that there’s a lot. A rare and historic comic book is at stake. The very first issue in which Superman showed up, it’s worth mucho mula and, from the outset, each member of this crafty and deceitful tribe is at work trying to figure out how to make the most of the opportunity.

They’re not exactly The Sopranos, but some variant of them on a less violent scale, though equally oriented to deceit and manipulation.

Blue (Theresa Nguyen) is seemingly the most earnest of the younger set, and determined, in her interactions with her brother, H (Michael Hisamoto), to get the upper hand. What that upper hand is, at any given point, is not exactly clear, though it involves getting the real antique comic book. There is also a replica of the comic book floating around and the shifting and displacement of the real one and the fake one with sleight of hand and a host of associated cons, provides the material for this complex but entertaining caper comedy.

As well, the brother of H and Blue, Francis (Tyler Simahk), who has seemed to give up con-artistry in favor of becoming a magician and escape artist in the Houdini mold, enters the fray. He too seems well-schooled in the attitudes and techniques of the con-artist’s trade and though one senses the sincerity with which he appears to have wanted to leave it, one also witnesses the opposite.

Shifting perspectives abound here, and the greatest and most earnest provider of those is the dear matron of this deceitful trio, Mabel (Lin-Ann Ching Kocar). One cannot quite believe she is the mother of this gang, but it appears she is. She is one hundred percent devoted to the con and to the cultivation of it and has done what she possibly can to train her children in the art of it.

She also seems like, hmm, a pretty trying parental figure in other ways. Leaving a ten-year old child at Coney Island to find the way home alone seems to have been standard operating procedure. This is a tough maternal cookie and she seems hell-bent on rearing her children to be strong, corrupt and self-sufficient in this peculiar way.

One of the most fun things in the show is hearing the characters rattle off the names of all the different cons. Though it’s not exactly clear what the actual cons are all about – that in itself would be a fascinating show – one got a strong feeling that there was an art and science involved in cultivating them.

The plot is so complicated and the shifting of allegiances and betrayals so fast and furious it’s really difficult to follow exactly what’s going on. In the end, that doesn’t matter all that much – one gets the drift.

The ending has a touch of sentimentality to it, but, there again, there’s been so much rampant conning and manipulation going on throughout that it’s difficult to even know whether that is for real.

One can credit the playwright for a rapidly shifting series of allegiances and perspectives, but one wonders, in the end, whether that flurry of manipulations serves the more general purposes of the plot. One really wants to know what this mother is about and why she has wrought what she has in this set of children she has reared. The cataclysm of shifts throughout the play gives some sense of that, though, in the end, one is left holding the bag that has been passed around so many times that one is not sure whether there is actually still anything in it.

– BADMan