Review Roundup: SUMO Opens At The Public Theater

Read reviews for The Public Theater and Ma-Yi Theater Company’s New York premiere of SUMO, a new play written by Lisa Sanaye Dring and directed by Obie Award winner Ralph B. Peña. 

Entrenched in an elite sumo training facility in Tokyo, six men practice, eat, love, play, and ultimately fight. Step into the sacred world of sumo wrestling, with the New York premiere of Lisa Sanaye Dring’s mesmerizing new drama, SUMO. Akio arrives as an angry, ambitious 18-year-old with a lot to learn. Expecting validation, dominance, and fame, and desperate to move up the ranks, he slams headlong into his fellow wrestlers. With sponsorship money at stake, their bodies on the line, and their futures at risk, the wrestlers struggle to carve themselves—and one another—into the men they dream of being. SUMO is a thrilling new play set in an elite and rarely explored world. Obie Award winner Ralph B. Peña directs this powerhouse drama. 

The complete cast of SUMO includes Kris Bona (Kannushi 2), Red Concepción (Fumio), Akira Fukui (Understudy), Michael Hisamoto (So), Ahmad Kamal (Ren), Earl T. Kim (Shinta), Hank Lin (Understudy), Haowen Luo 罗浩闻 (Understudy), David Shih (Mitsuo), Scott Keiji Takeda (Akio), Paco Tolson (Kannushi 1), and Viet Vo (Kannushi 3). SUMO features live taiko drumming by Shih-Wei Wu. 

SUMO featured scenic design by Wilson Chin, costume design by Mariko Ohigashi, lighting design by Paul Whitaker, sound design and music composition by Fabian Obispo, hair and wig design by Alberto “Albee” Alvarado, projection design by Hana S. Kim, prop design by Thomas Jenkeleit, and taiko drum composition and performance by Shih-Wei Wu. James Yaegashi is the sumo consultant and co-fight director, and Chelsea Pace is co-fight and intimacy director. Amrita Ramanan is the dramaturg. Alyssa K. Howard serves as production stage manager and Taeuk Kang as stage manager.

Jesse Green, The New York Times: Yet when you look for the souls within the clothing you find nothing as precise or vivid. That’s a problem that comes with the play’s virtues. Respect and delicacy, wonderful life values, are less so in drama, and Dring’s framing of the work with ingratiatingly comic narration from three priests, as if her subject would otherwise be too strange for New York theatergoers, has a paradoxical effect. It makes sumo seem like a museum exhibit, trapped behind glass. Better, perhaps, just to throw us into the ring.

Sara Holdren, Vulture: More compelling is the play’s main subplot, which follows the relationship between Fumio (Red Concepción), a middle-ranking wrestler at the heya, and Ren (an imposing Ahmad Kamal), the hardest worker in the stable, top in the rankings underneath Mitsuo and an infinitely more humane soul. Some of Dring’s finest work happens in her exploration of the love between these two men — secretly romantic in nature — and of the wider, platonic yet intensely physical love shared by all the rikishi. As an implicit celebration of big bodies and of varying, deeply feeling masculinities, Sumo is at its most beautiful.

Raven Snook, Time Out New York: But unlike the bouts, which often last less than a minute, Sumo frequently feels sluggish. The humorous sequences are high points, especially a scene of spirited post-tournament karaoke, but the central narrative—leading up to an epic final showdown that pits empathy against aspiration—ultimately feels too pat; a subplot involving a taboo relationship is more gripping than the main story. The play is a solid contender, but it doesn't have quite enough surprising moves to rise to the level of champion.

Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: As the story heads into its seemingly inevitable conclusion, the playwright and director, backed by their designers, summon up the spiritual gods of sumo in an attempt to ratchet earthly matters into a higher power of significance. Yet despite the crash course in mythology and sumo wrestling that began the play—or perhaps because such an information overload is hard to recall, let alone appreciate, more than two hours later—the climactic scene proves to be something of a fizzle.

Austin Fimmano, New York Theatre Guide: Sumo’s character arcs are compelling, if somewhat predictable. The same could be said for its larger story arc, in which Akio, the reckless, chomping-at-the-bit ingénue weighs the differing advice from his many mentors before ultimately choosing the path of humbleness over hypermasculinity. That said, its predictability does not lessen the impact. Like in Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, the story of humility triumphing over toxicity always holds weight.