FALLING IN TIME
At Performance Works until Nov. 12 Tickets: brownpapertickets.com
Some years ago, we had Shopping and F***ing; now Vancouver playwright C. E. Gatchalian brings us what might be called Teaching ESL and F***ing. There's not much falling-as in "falling in love" in Falling in Time, but there's sure a lot of pants down, simulated anal and oral sex. Be prepared to take your liberal attitude with you.
Sean Cummings directs Falling In Time alley-style: the play takes between two long banks of seats. Set and light designer Itai Erdal places one large white elevated circle at one end of the performance area and an elevated white square at the other. Three floor-to-ceiling illuminated panels flank the set. It's very clean, cool and elegant.
But the action is raw: young Korean ESL student Chang Hyun (Nelson Wong) meets regularly for lessons with his condescending teacher Jamie (Kevin Kraussler). By way of retribution-or so it seems-Chang Hyun takes advantage of Jamie's loneliness and homosexuality by engaging in loveless sex with him. Jamie is looking for love; Chang Hyun is, too, but he doesn't know it yet.
Chang Hyun is also having sex with American redneck Steve (Allan Morgan), a Korean War veteran. Wong literally pulls up his pants after mounting Kraussler, crosses the floor and bends Morgan over.
Pull-no-punches, graphic sex is what Screaming Weenie Productions does, but it's more than that. Falling in Time is, eventually, an unlikely love story. And there are some very poignant moments in the play. It's a long wait to the end (two-and-a-half hours, but there's a nice payoff when Steve, who has a son out there somewhere, provides loving support to unhappy, confused Chang Hyun on the eve of his return to Korea and-surprise, surprise-to his girlfriend. Well, maybe he'll be thinking twice about that arrangement.
Gatchalian structures the play with a lot of short scenes-some as short as a couple of lines. Wong plays both Chang Hyun and a wise-cracking Korean soldier under the command of Steve back in the '50s. As well as Jamie, Kraussler plays Brenda (Chang Hyun's girlfriend) and a couple of other roles. Manami Hara is Chang Hyun's grandmother Eun Ha and several others. In spite of battle jackets on and off and different T-shirts on and off, I confess to losing track sometimes of who was who and when was when. Are we in the 1950s in Korea now or are we back in Vancouver in the '90s? Is that a young Eun Ha being assaulted by a young Steve? Is it, therefore, coincidence that years later, her grandson (Chang Hyun) is having sex with the guy who assaulted her?
With such short scenes it's hard to invest a lot in any character despite very committed work. Wong expertly threads his way through Chang Hyun's stumbling English and what seems to be his character's transformation from passivity to dominance. Kraussler delivers a fragile, vulnerable Jamie while Hara is a spiritual, quiet grandmother. Surprisingly, it's Morgan's Steve that finally is the most affecting as the character's ugly arrogance melts into something approaching paternal love.
Falling In Time is too long. While the three scenes in which each of the male characters sings in a gay bar serves to showcase the considerable singing talent of Wong, Kraussler and Morgan, I don't know why these scenes are in this play.
Many years in the making, this production is a world premiere and, as such, is a work in progress. But it's an interesting blend of the political (American imperialism), the religious (Christianity's shortcomings) and the sexual (homosexuality, especially in the Asian community) that's finding an audience in Vancouver. A full house-even on a rare, sunny Sunday afternoon in November-attests to its relevance.
