2006-06-18—Chiang Kai Chek |
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By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Boy, was I taken! I thought that Sledgehammer Theatre's experimental piece Chiang Kai Chek was about the former ruler of China, the man who lost a monumental battle with Mao Zedung and retreated to the island of Taiwan, hoping to someday retake the Chinese mainland. I should have realized something was amiss from the spelling. The ruler I was thinking of was known not as Chiang Kai Chek, but Chiang Kai-shek, the third word starting not with "C" but an "S." Further, I should have caught that publicity referred to the main character not by his family name of Chiang, but by this made-up name of Chek. I had a special interest in this play. For family reasons I had wanted to learn more about this legendary leader. I thought it might be a way for me to deepen my knowledge of the land from which my daughter-in-law comes. I was interested that the director of the play was Scott Feldsher, a member of the Jewish community, and that the costume designer was his wife, Sarah Golden. Before the play, I had interviewed Feldsher by telephone, explaining the reason for my particular interest. He said nothing to disabuse me of my notion that I would be learning about the life of the historic figure. I filled my head with pictures of a meeting between Taiwan's history and Jewish culture. What a sorry bunch of crap! Any relationship between this audience abuse and Chiang Kai-shek's regime in China and later Taiwan can only be inferred. In fact, nothing of Chiang's personal story is told on stage. Instead a figure called Chek (John Polak) builds a house of cards while he relates stories largely dealing with ways to kill animals. Somebody call the SPCA! While he narrates, a talented dancer (Ericka Moore of the Eveoke Theatre)
moves expressively to the horror, and singer Markee Rambo-Hood moves zombie-like
through the production, occasionally piercing the air with her screams.
When she does sing, for the most part, it too is about death. A musician
in the back left corner of the stage, Nick Carvajal, although dressed in black,
is our only contact with anything resembling normalcy, although he sometimes
punctuates the eerie musical score by Tim Root with some strange sound
effects—at one time pouring water into a pitcher, at another rubbing a
balloon. |