By Andrew Hamlin
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
“Li,” a world premiere play from Inner Mongolia native Wei He, centers on its colorful, often-conflicted heroine, Li herself, played by Adele Lim. Over the course of two-plus hours, we’ll learn a lot about the folks in Li’s life, and her shifting relationships with them, but those shifts reveal more about Li into the bargain. Li projects a great deal of confidence and razzle-dazzle, but we come to learn what she’s hiding under her broad, ironic, and not entirely trustworthy smile.
The action takes place in Inner Mongolia’s capital city, Hohhot. Li lays out the geography of Hohhot, together with vivid descriptions of its sights, sounds, and smells. Her verbal travelogues transcend the set design by Teia O’Malley, which focuses on three spaces: A shop run by Li’s closest friend, the eccentric Wu (Owen Yen), with his live chicken sidekick Fatty (Ruby the chicken); Li’s home, shared with her mother, Hua (Serin Ngai); and the apartment of a nearly-blind lady, Lian (Kathy Hsieh).
Li’s twin brother, Rui (Jacob Chung), appears at various points onstage—sometimes above the rest of the action, sometimes level with it. (Generally, different stage blockings of the actors indicate the present, or the past.) He’s Hua’s pride and joy, a PhD living in New York City, but a personal revelation he makes to Li, with instructions to never tell Hua, throws Li into deep stress.
And Li’s already stressed enough. Not blessed with her brother’s academic gift, she resorts to lower, illegal pursuits. “I’m a thief, and I dig it,” crowed singer Richard Manuel in an old rock song, and Li, armed with lockpicks and pluck, throws herself into the trade with defiant glee—at first.
A week of stealing typically goes along, she chuckles, with “a good day, a bad day, and three days in the middle.” But a simple snatch-and-grab turns into a fateful confrontation with the blind woman, cycling through mistaken identity and comic misintentions, to deeper feelings that pull Li out of her protective, sarcastic shell.
Speaking of singing, the show’s got a lot of that as well. At intervals, disco lights flash gently on and off, a smoke machine fills the stage with vapor, and Michael Latham, as the “Singer,” enters with a microphone. Latham, who also plays a few other small roles, dispenses knowledge, wisdom, commentary, and sometimes just matter-of-fact observations, on what’s going on, using music composed by Seattle’s own Chinese American composer YUELAN. Music figures prominently throughout, whether it’s YUELAN songs mixing contemporary dance sounds with at least one person throat singing (Zje Mongol accompanies Latham from offstage), or an old song on a radio.
As the action intensifies, Li finds herself spread increasingly thin. She has to keep her brother’s secret, all the while wondering what her mother would do if she ever found out. She has to comfort her friend Wu, who, while generally cheery, frets over things he can’t change, like the tumor growing on his forehead or his chicken Fatty’s advancing age. Her relationship with the blind Lian grows by fits and starts, but it’s founded on deception, on Li’s part, and each new visit with Lian challenges Li to clarify, inwardly and outwardly, what she thinks, what she feels, and how she should move forward, or not. Her mental and emotional defenses become corroded, and start to disintegrate.
In the end, Li has to take a stand for her own emotions, however much they may hurt her. She must abandon bad behavior and psychologically hide from herself, to make peace with Lian, to give Rui what he needs, and mend her unraveling relationship with Hua—not to mention figuring out what Wu wants and needs. This will take all of her inner energy, but she’ll find her better self, and her loved ones, triumphant in the end, with a little help from stage smoke and throat singing.
“Li” plays through Feb. 8 at the Seattle Public Theatre, housed in the historic Bathhouse Theatre, 7312 West Green Lake Drive North on the west side of Seattle’s Green Lake.
For showtimes, ticket prices, and other information, visit https://yun-theatre.com/li.
Leave a Reply