วิจารณ์ล่าสุดของ Waterfall the musical

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‘Waterfall’ gushes but doesn’t keep a romance afloat



By Misha Berson
Seattle Times theater critic


The new Thai-American musical “Waterfall” is at 5th Avenue Theatre through Oct. 25, on what may be a pre-Broadway run. However, even with impressive talents onstage, the show isn’t convincing as a romance.

Yes, there is an actual waterfall onstage in the new musical “Waterfall.”

It is nicely landscaped with fake rocks and trees. And like many aspects of this earnest, dated show at the 5th Avenue Theatre, it gushes.

An elaborate stab at an epic romance, set mainly in Japan between 1933 and 1939, “Waterfall” feels like a pastiche of East-West love sagas (chaste and hot), from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I” to the Vietnam saga “Miss Saigon.”

A collaboration between leading Thai and Tony Award-honored American theater artists, it unfolds against Sasavat Busayabandh’s beautiful set and an evolving backdrop of gauzy and color-saturated projections.

The lead players, boyishly handsome Thai pop-music and TV star Bie Sukrit and 5th Avenue stalwart Laura Griffith, are pleasing singers who try their darndest to whip up some sexual chemistry.

But seasoned writer-lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. drenches “Waterfall” in so many gooey clichés, and the sweeping ballads in David Shire’s diverse score so overwhelm the story’s intimate moments, that not even a lusty embrace strikes sparks.

The storyline, freely adapted from Sri Burapha’s classic Thai novel “Behind the Painting,” is slender and predictable. In flashbacks, Noppon (Sukrit) is an ambitious young Thai who scores a low-level post under Siamese diplomat Chao Kun (a distinguished Thom Sesma).

The 60-ish diplomat is decades older than his pretty, bored American wife, Katherine (Griffith), who appears to have no vocation or hobbies. So when Noppon travels with the couple to Japan on a diplomatic mission, guess what happens?

Assigned to divert Katherine while Chao Kun is busy trying to negotiate a treaty, Noppon falls madly, instantly in love with her. (He’s crazy for all things American.) Katherine’s attracted, too, but frets about betraying her husband. The two stroll in the moonlight, exchange self-realization banalities and splash around the ersatz waterfall.

Meanwhile, on the diplomatic front, things look bleak. As Siam transforms into the democratic nation of Thailand, Japan grows fascist and more hostile to the West. It’s no dice for a treaty, so Chao Kun and the self-sacrificing Katherine return to Bangkok — where, years later, she has a bittersweet encounter with Sukrit, who has clearly moved on.

The “Waterfall” creators have added more political context to the show since its world premiere last summer at Pasadena Playhouse. This highly eventful era in Asian geopolitics, as World War II looms on the horizon, holds more dramatic promise than the vapid, unconvincing romance.

But the periodic news bulletins don’t add much historical depth. And the more topical songs are mainly blunt declarations and mockeries of national identity: “I Like the Japanese,” and “I Am Not Thai,” and “I Like Americans.”

The most memorable is “America Will Break Your Heart,” a takedown of U.S. bigotry and Japanese chauvinism, sung by a character we barely get to know, the Japanese-American entertainer Kumiko (Lisa Helmi Johanson). Yet like, other numbers, it brings to mind songs from better cross-cultural musicals like “Flower Drum Song, “The King and I” — and in this case, “America,” from “West Side Story.”

Wade Laboissonniere’s eye-catching cocktail gowns-to-kimonos costumes look authentically traditional and ’30s-modern. The direction by co-producer Tak Viravan and Dan Knechtges, (who is also the choreographer) is generally polished, if sometimes stilted. (Do we really need ballet-dancer surrogates for the lovers, doing a corny whirl by the waterfall?)

But the essential shortcomings with “Waterfall” are more basic, and disappointing given the prominent talents involved. For material this familiar, more developed characters, less clunky dialogue (“I am an artist in my soul!”) and a much fresher exploration of cultural identity and relations are simply must-haves — in Seattle, and (if the show aims there) on Broadway.
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