Review: A Potent YEAR ZERO Opens Season at Merrimack Rep

Written by Michael Golamco; directed by Kyle Fabel; scenic design, Randall Parsons; costume design, Deborah Newhall; lighting design, Brian J. Lilienthal; sound design/composer, David Remedios; stage manager, Casey Leigh Hagwood

Cast in Order of Appearance:

Vuthy, Daniel Velasco; Ra, Juliette Hing-Lee; Han, Michael Rosete; Glenn, Arthur Keng

Performances and Tickets:

Ends Sunday, October 5, 2 pm; tickets are $20-$60 and are available online at www.mrt.org or by calling the Box Office at 978-654-4678.

The Merrimack Repertory Theatre (MRT) in Lowell, Mass. opens its 36th season with the potent new play YEAR ZERO, a taut and touching comedic drama about a first-generation Cambodian-American teenager coming of age as he comes to grips with the death of his mother, a survivor of the horrific genocide of the Khmer Rouge and a woman who held her family together when abandoned by her husband. Set in Long Beach, California in 2003, YEAR ZERO is the only play written thus far that explores the experiences of the children of Cambodian refugees beginning new lives in America.

The play is particularly relevant to MRT since Lowell has the second largest Cambodian-American population in the U.S. - second only to Long Beach. A city of immigrants who were attracted first to the mills during the industrial revolution and then to high-tech manufacturing jobs in the 1980s, Lowell has seen many first-generation citizens struggle with identity, acceptance and assimilation. What makes the Cambodian experience unique, however, is that the parents who came here initially were not immigrants but refugees - survivors fleeing unspeakable atrocities in their homeland. They had no extended families or communities already settled here to welcome them as was the case with many Jews escaping the Holocaust. They were also not white Europeans, so their language and cultural differences were significant.

YEAR ZERO takes its name from the Khmer Rouge's efforts to eliminate from Cambodia all traces of modern culture - including the brutal massacre and burial of nearly 2,000,000 teachers, artists, scientists, doctors and other intellectuals in the country's open spaces that came to be known as the "killing fields." The goal of this powerful extremist rebel group was to return Cambodia to an agrarian society by wiping out all remnants of the past and beginning again from "year zero." In the play, the term refers equally to the teenaged Vuthy's attempts to find his place in a world where there is no tangible past. His mother never shared her history with him or his older sister Ra, and like so many first-generation Americans, Vuthy is caught between a past he doesn't understand and a future he doesn't know how to attain.

As Vuthy, the young Daniel Velasco is all hyperkinetic 16-year-old, legs twitching and mind wandering from one topic of conversation to another. He bounces between the Dungeons and Dragons game he is playing, the superhero graphic novel he is drawing, and the haunting rap song he sings to a skull in honor of his dead mother. He wears his frustrations on his sleeve and uses tough talk to mask his vulnerabilities. He angrily balks when his sister (Juliette Hing-Lee) insists that he be a man and toe the line, but he also whimpers like a frightened five-year-old when he pleads for her to let him live with her and her boyfriend Glenn (Arthur Keng) up at Berkeley.

Velasco's Vuthy is half nerd - he's very bright and therefore doubly bullied by his Samoan classmates - and half faux gangsta, emulating his sister's ex-con ex-boyfriend Han (Michael Rosete) who has returned to the Long Beach neighborhood, and perhaps the violent TRG gang. Han is a de facto surrogate father figure to Vuthy, on the one hand encouraging him to stand up to the bullies but on the other demanding that he make more of his life than he has himself. Still in love with Ra, Rosete's Han is a paradox of vice and virtue. His raw power and sensuality make him a dangerous attraction, yet his innate wisdom and kindness - and unconditional love and respect for Vuthy and Ra's late mother "Ma" - suggest that his path could have been a very different one given more favorable circumstances.

One of the most gripping scenes in YEAR ZERO is between Han and Ra, when he shares his own early childhood memories of Khmer Rouge. Having witnessed firsthand the atrocities that Ma also experienced, he became her confidante in their new land. When Han tells Ra of Ma's family history and daring escape, Ra is devastated, not by the details but by the grief she has been bottling up inside and the sudden emptiness she feels at never having truly known or appreciated her mother while she was alive. Hing-Lee expresses Ra's collapse with a torrent of tears and rage that takes one's breath away. Every ounce of control that Ra had been exerting in order to pack up her mother's house drains from her veins and sinew. Not only is Ra now uncertain about everything in her past. She is also uncertain about everything she had planned for her future. Being a doctor and marrying Glenn now looks like someone else's American Dream.

As the preppy Glenn, a Chinese American whose affluent immigrant family has provided him with all of the comforts and education one could hope for, Keng comes across as a nice guy who just doesn't get it when it comes to Ra's background. He is supportive, but clueless. He wants to understand the turmoil she and Vuthy are experiencing over their mother's death, but the pampered pragmatist in him prevents him from having even an inkling of empathy. Ra tries to be diplomatic about their differences, but Vuthy doesn't even try to mask his contempt.

By making Glenn a Chinese American immigrant, playwright Michael Golamco has smartly drawn the difference between refugees and immigrants while also comically debunking the ill-conceived stereotype that all Asians are alike. In addition, he has implanted the notion of hope for each ensuing generation of families who come to America either by choice or by chance. For every Han who feels trapped and hopeless, and for whom gang violence is the only path to power, there is a Glenn who has benefited from the travails of the generation before him - an up and coming professional who has found a way to "get along."

Which road will Vuthy travel? Because of his mother, he has the power to choose.

PHOTOS BY MEGHAN MOORE: Michael Rosete as Han, Daniel Velasco as Vuthy, and Juliette Hing-Lee as Ra; Daniel Velasco and Juliette Hing-Lee; Michael Rosete and Juliette Hing-Lee; Arthur Keng as Glenn, Michael Rosete, Daniel Velasco and Juliette Hing-Lee

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