January 22, 2004
By Beverly Friend
If ever a play followed the adage “show, don’t tell,” it is this one.
Five skilled actors enact post World War II Japanese brides of Americans – facing military prejudice, leaving home, crossing the ocean, enduring 20 years in Kansas. Then, they assume the swaggering, blue-collar, back-slapping roles of their husbands. Later, they turn into the women’s giggling teen-age daughters, chafing under the restrictions of stern Japanese-American mothers. Each incarnation is vivid and complete. Four of the women gather after the suicide of the fifth. As they tidy her cluttered apartment where clothes strew the floor and the overturned dining-room table, they straighten their own thoughts. Ceremonially drinking tea at the now upright table, they perform memories while they mourn – continually shuttling between the two cultures as they change in and out of kimonos, and shift language and attitude. Kudos to Director Lynn Ann Bernatowicz for this smooth, skillful interplay.
Stephanie Santos is perfect as anguished suicide Himiko Hamilton. Earlier, she’d shot her abusive husband and lost a beloved daughter in a violent rape / murder.
Her fellow war brides – at first more acquaintances than friends – are distinctive. Mary Ann de la Cruz and Kate Garassino portray sweet, naïve brides: Setsuko Banks and Teruko MacKenzie. Their errors of adjustment are touching: Setsuko squatted on the toilet seat, then faced the wrong way in her first exposure to American plumbing. Teruko, trying to please her husband by getting the car washed, drove through the facility at a speedy 25 miles per hour, damaging the vehicle.
In contrast, Roxanne Lee, in a stunning red suit, plays sophisticated, embittered Atsuko Yamamoto, while Erika Winters takes on the part of the most Americanized of the group, Chizuye Juarez, a tall, willowy, very sexy lady. All they appear to have in common at first is their ethnicity.
The women’s differences are reflected in their husbands, who include an African American, a Mexican-American, and a brutal redneck. Over the years, two women have become widows, but, in spite of the problems of living in Kansas, elected to stay in the U.S.
The wonderful dialogue is often poetic. “I shot him through the heart I never knew he had,” Himiko says of her late husband. Later, describing her life she comments, “I was born in a storm and it’s never stopped raining.” She describes her relationship with her daughter: “For years I tried to talk to her, but she wasn’t ready. Mieko is so fast, I only know what she looks like from behind.”
Richard Schneider’s cozy stage set reflects the intimacy of the tea ceremony. The first audience row sits on cushions on the floor surrounding the stage, and the second row is only slightly elevated, on cushioned benches.
In depicting Japanese war brides struggling to survive in American culture – but sometimes drowning – playwright Velina Hasu Houston concludes a trilogy initially inspired by the life of her mother, now expanded to cover a whole range of characters and issues. A beautifully executed drama, 85 minutes without intermission, “Tea” was selected as one of the 10 best plays by women worldwide for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in London.