A sold-out crowd devoured Banana Boys on its Wednesday night opening at Hart House. The play, performed by Asian theatre company Fu-Gen, is an adaptation of Terry Woo’s novel that first hit the stage in 2004. The title refers to assimilated Asian-Canadians: yellow on the outside, white on the inside. The storyline, which follows five Chinese-Canadians through university and beyond, is a little harder to pin down.
We open with the funeral of Rick Wong (Jeff Yung), the slick hustler with high cheekbones, who is one of five Chinese-Canadian friends at the University of Waterloo. The boys bond over alcohol and discuss relationships, parents, and racism—until Rick abandons his buddies.
In a striking scene, he learns from a language tape how to be a moneyed, Fresh-Off-the-Boat immigrant, superior to those “mainland bottom-feeders.” (Mainland China is distinguished from the more affluent Hong Kong and Taiwan, though the play doesn’t address the Boys’ provenance.) Rick decides that class trumps race, and he wants to be a winner—no political solidarity, no more “one of us!” He storms out after what the Boys call “the mother of all fights” and everybody moves on, until his funeral.
Rick’s “mindshifts” in time—thanks to pills and alcohol—loosely frame the story’s flow. Such flashes don’t make for the most lucid storytelling, but the play unfolds with episodes in a mostly chronological order. The wandering nature of the play allows for its saving grace: fantastical and hilarious sequences that stray from realism.
Mike Chow’s (Christian Feliciano) career, for example, is framed as a multiple choice question on a game show, complete with booty-shaking pageantry and a screaming fan planted in the audience. The decision is made when Mama Chow bodyslams her son into the correct answer (A. Doctor). In another scene, love is a battlefield. Luke (Byron Abalos), as the good Sergeant, explains via Venn diagrams why the Banana Boys can’t get a date.
Consequently, the play suffers when reality drags on for too long. As the fourth and final acts focus increasingly on Rick’s drug-fuelled freak-outs, the story loses momentum. By the time Rick implores Mike to follow his dreams of becoming a writer—“let my story teach them their dreams are possible and this Banana Boy shit is not getting them anywhere”—I feel like I’ve seen this prophet-from-beyond-the-grave shtick a thousand times.
The cast of five is undeniably talented—switching from their Banana Boy personas to play girlfriends, grannies, and white dudes, they tackle every role with relish, even when forced to speak cringe-worthy lines like “I realize…I loved you the most.” Shel’s (Darrel Gamotin) good-boy sincerity charms the audience, and Karl Ang is right at home as Dave the DJ, having taken on similar roles in past Fu-Gen productions.
Banter is the strongest suit of playwright Leon Aureus—the characters are so fleshed out that I noticed only afterwards they each conveniently represent a “type” of Asian. And movement coach Clare Preuss definitely earned her paycheque—the exaggerated physical antics had the house howling.
Identity is the play’s central question, and it’s never more apparent than Rick’s death by mirror shard to the chest. (“Self-image would be the death of me,” he quips.) There’s obsession with cataloguing: Luke keeps a running “racial incident log,” from which he narrates cases, filed by number. In nightmare sequences, the guys dissect Mike and make an inventory of his insides (A Michael Bublé CD instead of intestines and an MCAT book where his heart should be).
The enumeration plays off the Asian math nerd stereotype, but it’s also how we piece together identity: combing through memories and trying to find patterns. For the Banana Boys, ethnicity is never out of mind. This preoccupation is perhaps best embodied by Luke, who fumes that Asians sit back and tolerate the bullying, and whose own anger is supposed to compensate for that docility. Is there such a thing as moving past racial identity? The ending suggests that the guys are only held back by their identifying as Banana Boys, but how much of their bond comes from sharing the Chinese-Canadian experience? A major criticism of the play, on- and off-stage, is the rejection of cultural heritage. How do you embrace that culture without descending into simplistic politics of race?
These are difficult questions, and the pat ending of Banana Boys doesn’t even come close to addressing them. Fortunately, the brilliance of the play’s detours are much more memorable.
Rating: VVVV
