Go Ahead ... Pick a Card

When coming out of a busy subway stop in the '80s, you might be lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to come across a game of three-card monte.

The game is near a guy with a cheap briefcase of counterfeit Rolexes caught up in a swirl of steam escaping a street-level grate (just a little noir touch). You’d usually hear the game before you saw it, a voice calling out like a carnival barker seducing passersby with the promise of easy money. All you have to do is pick the right card. The words flow like a river through the bustle of the city, slowing down just enough to grab you, then speeding up as the cards start moving — floating even. Then, when you wedge between a guy eating a folded slice and a big guy (always a big guy) with a wad of cash in his hand, you see the action.

Perched perilously atop a couple of milk crates or cardboard boxes is a little stage. The actors? Three folded cards and two hands. You watch some guy win. Easy money. Then you see someone reach into their pocket and pull out a 20-dollar bill, or maybe even a Benjy. You see them become almost hypnotized by the words and the lyrical arc of the cards and that voice — narrating and deceiving in the same instant. They get up their courage and point to a card, sure they’d just doubled their money. Then their money disappears as quickly as the cards move.

Depending on how big the bettor is, you might feel the air thicken and a sense of danger rolling in — like things may get out of hand. Or, the bettor could slink off down the street, their pocket a little lighter. Even if you're smart enough to not bet, you get caught up in the action, the rhythm of the patter, the poetry of the cards' movement, and the dangerous, gritty excitement of the con. Then you hear a siren, maybe an ambulance, and in the time it takes you to turn your head, the whole operation vanishes.

Susan Lori Parks' 2001 play Topdog/Underdog starts and ends with a game of three-card monte — but really, the whole play captures that mesmerizing, desperate draw and danger of a street hustle. That’s not an easy trick to pull off across two and a half hours in the safety of the theater, but you can tell from the opening words you’re going to be drawn in. The spirit of that con game flows through the world. There’s the constant sense of danger and the flimsy solidity of the structure. You feel, like that sheet of cardboard perched on top, like the whole thing might tip over at any minute — or might be snatched away and disappear. You also sense that there’s some invisible magic at work behind the scenes. There’s a mastery the performers, like that dealer, are hiding from us. And if they’re hiding it from us — we must be the mark.

Ms. Parks captures all this with incredible poetic precision. To live her words, an actor must make time elastic like the street barker — at one instant the words rush forward almost too quickly to be perceived, then, a legato line grabs us and slows to a near stop. Every passage, every thought has drive behind it — an energy where the words leave an impression on the space. The challenge is not to make the heightened language seem natural, but instead, lived. That’s not easy. When done right, it’s no less challenging or powerful than Shakespeare.

Gregg T. Daniels directs two remarkable actors in this production at Pasadena Playhouse. This ensemble captures all that and more. Folks know I’m a huge fan of Mr. Daniels’ body of work which he’s forging across Los Angeles theaters. With each new play, he’s deepening a dialogue about the Black experience in America. The consistency of his work is as astounding as its reach. Across half a dozen theaters, he’s methodically working to give voice to these plays. If you’ve never seen his work, this is one of the best. The whole production is painfully on point.

If you’ve never seen the play, we spend the whole time in the dingy room that two brothers, Lincoln and Booth, call home. Booth, the younger, has no job and spends most of his time boosting stuff from stores. Lincoln, the older one, has a job playing Abraham Lincoln in white-face — it’s a good gig, a sit-down job with benefits. All he has to do is sit there and be shot by strangers.

Back when this play opened in 2001, Lincoln's job struck me as patently absurd and over the top — an almost bizarre gimmick of the play. Now, in a world where the moral arc of the universe seems to be stripping back — where images of the 1960s, the 1930s, and even the 1860s feel like coming attractions rather than ancient markers — the play seems all too relevant. (But of course!) two Black brothers would be trapped as Lincoln and Booth by the sins of our past. 

Whenever I travel to see something in Pasadena, I always ask — is it worth the trip? For this production, the answer is a resounding yes. Don’t miss this one. You won’t see a better production of this play.

Topdog/Underdog plays at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena through March 23rd.

This is Anthony Byrnes opening the curtain of LA Theater for KCRW.

Discovering Tragedy and Triumph... Through Rock

I’m about to tell you not to miss a play about genocide ... and that's not even the weird part... I’m going to tell you it’s a fun night out. Before you think I’ve completely lost my mind, let me break down Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band at East West Players.

The play is set in Phnom Penh and bounces back and forth between 2008 and 1975. It’s the story of how a Cambodian father (who survived the genocide of the Khmer Rouge) and his American immigrant daughter make sense of those atrocities and how they fit into their own lives. But it’s also the story of Cambodian rock music of the 1960s and '70s. 

How those two fit together and bounce across time is part of the magic of the play which starts out feeling a bit like a mess. You jump from an amazing performance by a live five-piece rock band into an odd narrator who leaps up from the audience to take control — only to drop us in a hotel room and a seemingly unrelated story of an over-eager Asian dad barging in unannounced on his daughter. While you might not know what’s going on, playwright Lauren Yee definitely does. Part of the joy of the play is how all the disparate threads get woven together.

The engine of the play is the mystery of the past. Like a good detective story, we keep accumulating pieces and trying to make sense of the whole. At its core, we’re following the redemptive story of a father and daughter, but along the way, Ms. Yee plays with who owns a narrative and the power of music to connect across place and time. It’s a play where small, bizarre details all suddenly make sense in the end.

Alongside Ms. Yee’s dialogue is the music of LA’s own Dengue Fever. The play bounces back and forth between the music and the story until they finally merge. If you’ve never heard Dengue Fever’s music, it draws inspiration from this same time and place. The band came together back in 2001 to play Cambodian rock music created by artists who were then either killed or disappeared by the Khmer Rouge — a continuation of a lost moment.

While each component of the play is stellar, what’s striking is the journey the playwright crafts to bring it all together. She makes the evening a joyous triumph rather than a somber remembrance — without short-changing the tragedy. I won’t give away too much because it’s a play where the discovery is critical to the journey.

East West just extended the production so don’t miss this one.

Cambodian Rock Band plays through March 27th at East West Players in downtown LA.