When is a tragedy not a tragedy? When we realize the Only Way Is Forward and healing takes place on a lot of levels.

In the folk-rock musical Pawn, by Karmia Chan Cao (playwright, director, and composer) we see a Canadian family split apart twice in 10 years, first by the oldest son being taken from them in the crumbling of the Twin Towers on September 11th and later on when the younger son volunteers to go overseas for three years to Afghanistan.   The eldest son, Kai, is now just a picture on the top of a shelf in the family’s convenience store (the picture is of Eric Tran who plays piano with the rest of the band).

Now their other son, Abraham Niu (Alex Kaneko) will be finishing his second and final tour of duty in Afghanistan in 5 days and the story of this play circles around the end of his journey home and how he he finds resolution from his brother’s death by making a the most important choice of his life. It is a lush play with many different layers: cultural, spiritual, and that of personal redemption … of many types. It has truly been finely crafted and I hope this play get to “make it big” and spread its message:  to accept the moment we are in and use it to make the future brighter to a larger audience sooner rather than later.

We begin with this family singing forlornly;  they miss their sons terribly. The family is made up of  the mother (Ma played by Sarah Guerrero), the father (Ba played by Julian Kusnadi), and the daughter (Shea played by Alicia Triana).

At the same time, back in Afghanistan, Abraham’s unit finds out that they will have to guard the perimeter of a village they have been working to establish friendly relationships with for several months.  They’ll have to guard to make sure that no one gets out of the village.  They feel like they will be betraying both the villagers as well as themselves, but those are their orders.

[AK featuring Gator (played by Sam Julian) and the ensemble (played by Karen Young, Anna Gu, Christian Ollano, Katherine Neubauer, Mark Hammer Johnson, Rachel Purcell, and Troy Yang) in the Fringe cast]

Abraham has misses his home and this causes him to have a change of heart and he begins trying to warn some of the villagers of the coming danger after comparing the desert with his snowy native land of Alberta, and wishing he could make himself pure again after his time as a soldier in Afghanistan. He finds some children in the targeted area which is to be bombed and tries to get them to call off the run, but he can’t get Gator to stop the run before the first barrage.  He is order to get out of the impact zone before the plane comes back for it’s second pass.  Abraham rushes back in to get the children out and a dying mother presses her baby in his arms.

At the same time his mother, sensing her child is threatened, reaches out with her spirit to protect him however she could. She chants a song of protection as the bombs are zooming in on their targets.

The lights go down and then Abraham finds himself in the Pawn Shop of Time confronted by a stranger.

Once in the Pawn Shop of Time he is approached by someone who introduces himself as Lego (played by Graham Roth), who in part looks like his army buddy Gator but in part reminds him of a childhood toy.  He finds himself surrounded by bits and pieces of memories from his life.  Lego is some cross between Puck and a guardian angel or some personal incarnation of intuition slowed down enormously.

Lego reads from a book, apparently Abraham’s Book of Life which seems to be set the form of a poetic play dialogue with Lego as   narrator.  It explains that Abraham is in the Pawn Shop of Time, where time has been stretched.  What will only be the last few seconds before the bomb above him drops will feel as if it takes up the length of a night.  In that time Abraham will have to make the most important decision of his life: will he run away from the blast site thus saving himself  but dooming the native children to death?

It seems that the metaphor of  Pawn Shop works to bring across the idea that it a place where we have all the forgotten things in our lives, as well as a place to evaluate and decide what can be traded for what.  It also underscores that this is the time for him to no longer be just a pawn, but to finally take control of himself and truly make a decision. But before he makes this most difficult decision, he must look back at his life and see what brought him here.

At the end everyone sees that – as the title says – the “Only Way is Forward”. We see Abraham’s vision of the future and funeral inspirations and how his family finds closure.

In this great musical by Karmia Chan Cao we see a triumphant journey from pain to redemption as a family steps out from under the shadow casts by prejudice in their home in Alberta.  Since the final show was cancelled due to the oncoming Hurricane Irene, instead of a regular review I made a more of a compilation in order to tell a lot of the story, so more people could get a chance to see this. These clips are from an earlier version of the show, with a more basic production.  The Fringe production was very smooth with great sound (sound design by Jason Fang and assisted by Tamarind King) and music (played by this talented group of musicians: Eric Tran playing piano; Nathan Heng-chi Cheung, playing Liuqin, Melodica, and Glockenspiel;  Sterling Camden playing electrical guitar;  Stephen Quiñónez on acoustic guitar, and Karmia Cao on drums) as well as lively dance (choreographed by Alisha Mitchell) beautiful costumes (by Leanna Keyes) and a set that pulls together the many different locations of this play (the convenience store, Afghanistan, Chinatown, New York and The Pawn Shop of Time) in a very balanced and meaningful way (set design by Michael Cohen).

This play has had a lot of world wide critical acclaim, and a very heartfelt and meaningful storyline and I hope it gets the chance to be in the Fringe Encore  Series so we all get another chance to see it again.

~~~
Pawn ran until August 26, 2011 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.
~~~

Related Posts:

• The Custodian (Fringe Festival 2011)

What’s the difference between a janitor and a custodian? It’s all about a sense of responsibility for what you care for.  The Custodian is a story about trying to find one’s way in the world, the complexities of love, and one normal man’s struggle to learn how to fight back against the messy carelessness of superheroes creating a codependent relationship with the regular citizens of New York by saying they need to save the world from disaster and then making the people trapped under the rubble of their battles beg to be rescued.

The Custodian (written and directed by Will Lacker) opens upon a messy apartment where a man is avidly playing a video game.  All of sudden another man (played by Kevin Alan) in a bright yellow getup comes out of the shadows.  Is this our first look at a superhero in this play?  We quickly find out he is announcing another tussle between super hero and super villain … and the effect it is having on traffic (this announcer’s specialty). Kevin returns time and time again as the voice of the world outside the apartment whether as announcer or as a trivia savant who gives the other characters special bits of information to help them understand more arcane facts that they (or the audience) need to know.

Kevin does a great job of conveying the excitement and investment the world seems to have in the exploits of superheroes.  He also gives the underlying fear of collateral damage that is unsaid but sometimes seen in his face.  Sound and lighting is done expertly by Matt Wharton who brings us deeply resonate thuds, thumps and crashes of the scary world outside the apartment which is never seen.

The clever costumes by Sara Lukasiewicz and Laurel Casillo (who plays Wanda) illustrate flamboyancy of the world outside in the glimpses we get.

In this story what our hero, Max (played by Eryck Tate), cares for is nothing less than New York City, and he isn’t used to having such large passionate feelings, so his transformation from a normal everyman to The Custodian is a tough one.  He has an eccentric roommate Remi (played by Nick Hepsoe), who has obsessions with trivia, Gina Davis and a “commitment” to video games, as well as a trust fund to support his habits.

His girlfriend Wanda (played by Laurel Casillo) is always being supportive and her father gets Max an interview which seems like it might be far up on the ladder of success (“data entry” – an exciting possibility to Max), but the job is of custodian.  He is sent home with a mop to work on his mopping skills.

Later Max wakes up to his “day off” and an urgent call from his supervisor Manuello that he’s “needed urgently” to help sweep up the four floors of smashed glass caused by a superhero.  Only you can save us!

Added to the mix is a story of an old yet mysterious friend of Remi’s named Fing (played by Adam Delia), a wild-man guerilla fighter just out of Uganda who will be staying with them for an “indefinite” period of time.  Wanda is at first repulsed by Fing, but soon a chemistry beginning to develop.

With disaster threatening to take down the city, and Wanda’s life in peril, what can they do to stop the careless rampaging of superheroes?  Then the answer comes in a flash (a muddled confused and almost incoherent flash) of mental agility.

Kidnap a superheroes sidekick!

It seems wrong and yet so right.   A plan is made and we see the wheels of transformation happen to all in this gang of would-be crusaders.

See the show while you can for a great mix of laughs, ethical dilemmas, and great chemistry both between and within the characters as they all change into something closer to their true selves as we see the birth of  The Custodian!

~~~

The Custodian
Five Flights Theater Company
Writer: Will Lacker
Director: Will Lacker

1h 45m

www.fiveflightstheatercompany.org
VENUE #6: The Living Theatre
Thu 18 @ 8 Wed 24 @ 2 Sat 27 @ 7

Related Posts:

• Pawn (Fringe Festival 2011)
• Anna & The Annadroids: Memoirs Of A Robot Girl (Fringe Festival 2011)
• A Way Of Man (Fringe Festival 2011)
• Swingin’ Threesome Can Lead To A Lot Of Questions