Tea Reviews
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.
Read MoreTea Silk Road Theatre Project, at the Loop Theater. In Japanese society, drinking tea is not only a pastime but a religion and an emblem of nationalist pride. It serves a no less mythic purpose in Asian-American playwright Velina Hasu Houston's Tea, set in the late 60s in a backwater Kansas military settlement that features "wide-open plains and narrow minds." Here four Japanese war brides--stripped of their native comforts and customs--host a tea ceremony in remembrance of a fifth whose suicide has sent ripples through a divided community.
Houston's attempt to distill the experiences of thousands of postwar immigrants into five complementary characters initially suggests a Japanese version of The Joy Luck Club. But her efforts to give them life are palpable, and she takes pains to consider the racial and sexual politics of the era without flaunting its social consciousness. Director Lynn Ann Bernatowicz emphasizes the cultural rifts with a staging that draws heavily on the Noh tradition, employing stylized movement as a bridge between scenes grounded in grim everyday rituals. Houston tries to put her characters' struggles in context with two perfunctory scenes in which they envision themselves as their husbands and children, but the women's stories are gripping enough: multifaceted portrayals by Roxanne Lee and Erika Winters anchor the talented ensemble. The theme of cultural extinction haunts Tea: Houston's women drink to both love and loss, sipping cups of warm tea to cut a Zen path between a troubling past and an unpromising future.
Read MoreTea is overall a great production. The play gives us an intimate look at Japanese customs, marrying outside one’s race and the social backlash that comes from doing so.
Read MoreThe only thing more impressive than a new theater company’s inaugural production being a brilliant success, is them following it up with another gem. Back to back treasures means it’s no fluke.
Read MoreThis smart but didactic play by Velina Hasu Houston rises above its limitations through the impassioned performances of the company, as directed by Lynn Ann Bernatowicz.
Read More[In] witnessing these women's often troubled, invariably complex lives -- lives in which they existed in a sort of limbo as they attempted to straddle distinct cultures and fend off a profound sense of isolation -- you become aware of just how difficult the transition to a new society can be for any "outsider."
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