Everyman Theatre: Dinner and Cake

You know me--I'm sunshine and roses when it comes to theatre most of the time.

"Dinner and Cake" is a world premiere by playwright Tuyết Thị Phạm. It is the story of two families who come together on the occasion of their children's first anniversary of marriage. The Drummings are retired members of the Foreign Service who did their service in Asia, mostly Indochina. The Trans are members of the post war professional class in Vietnam and have traveled from Hanoi to Washington, DC for the occasion. The heart of the conflict is over the marriage of Matthew Drumming to Thuy Tran. And neither of them have a physical presence in the play. Instead the intermediary is Mylinh, a young woman with a law degree from Stanford whose family escaped Vietnam at the fall of Saigon, and who herself as traveled across the US to be with her White boyfriend. She has been asked to act as interpreter by the Drummings. The dialogue between the Drummings is in English and between the Trans in Vietnamese, Mylinh slides between the two translating and mistranslating in an effort to keep the experience civil. When Vietnamese is spoken the text in English appears above the stage.  The Drummings are written to personify the ugly American psuedo-cultural liberal elite, while the Trans work hard to not allow their resentment over their daughter's marriage to rise to the surface. The show is billed as a comedy...

Where to begin? The actors do well with what they have to work with. I was most impressed with Helen Hedman who has the heaviest lift as the outspoken and more blatantly bigoted of the Drummings. The playwright herself performs the role of Mrs. Tran. She is a good actress. Dinh James Doan as Mr. Tran has the least to work with as his character is the most subdued--which, of course, means that he will deliver the zinger line.

Here's the thing.  I respect the fact that writing a play is not an easy thing to do.  And to have the excellent resources of the production company like Everyman to stage it, is a gift that any playwright would be lucky to have; however, this cake was taken out of the oven too soon.  The first things first: as a comedy, it simply wasn't very funny.  The conceits were all low hanging fruit and most depended upon Carolina Do as Mylinh to deliver them.  A competent performance as far as moving the plot along, but comic timing?  Nope.  But even in the hands of a more capable performer, I don't think it would have made a difference.  Second, I had the big surprise at the end figured out 10 minutes in...and then just felt forced to wait for it.  I would wager that if I didn't even tell you, from what I have told you, you've got it figured out, too.  These are sophomore weaknesses in the design.  Don't hang your entire play on a gimmick that's been done since the Marx Brothers were making movies.

Finally, if you're going to go to all the trouble of writing a play, it ought to have something to say worth hearing.  The play ended on a flat note.  The cake has fallen.  The Drummings learn nothing except that they are boorish and stupid--and frankly, I'm not even sure they learned that.  They were just left humiliated.  Now, don't misunderstand, as the white characters in a play by a Vietnamese writer, I'm not saying that they needed to find redemption.  To have done that would potentially have placed them in the center of the story--which is where they think they are anyways.  But what do the Trans get out of this?  They are left no better off in terms of the central conflict.  They are, in fact, just as stuck as they were when their plane landed at Dulles.  The fact that the Trans got to stick it to the more than deserving Drumming's is a hollow victory, and leaves only the sense that the point of the play was to humiliate a caricatured white couple.  There is nothing to think about.  Like the surprise at the end that was not clever in the least, the effect of the work as a whole not simply leaves you without anything to ponder, it doesn't even give a reason to want to find something to ponder.   Mercifully, the play was without an intermission and only lasted 90 minutes.

The set and lighting were as amazing as I have come to expect from this wonderful theatre company.   

The Entire Cast L-R: Dinh James Doan (Mr. Tran), Tuyết Thị Phạm (Mrs. Tran), Carolina Do (Mylinh), Helen Hedman (Mrs. Drumming) and Bruce Randolph Nelson (Mr. Drumming).

Mrs Drumming and Mrs. Tran