April 10, 2012
By Jack Helbig
The mix of contemporary and classic tunes alone makes this cabaret worth seeing. But Re-Spiced is smarter than your average evening of great music because Jamil Khoury has wittily turned his playlist into a 90-minute meditation on the myriad ways in which the West gets the East wrong.
Starting with a deconstruction of the casually racist theme song from Disney's Aladdin, Khoury lays bare the tendency to idealize, romanticize, or demonize the Asian Other. If this sounds too serious to be fun, be assured that the ensemble of energetic triple-threats know how to sell material ranging from Randy Newman's comic sendup of Tiger Moms and Dads, "Korean Parents," to South Pacific's hyper-earnest look at racism, "Carefully Taught."