Review: FAR EAST at On the Verge Theatre

White people.  Playwright A.R. Gurney became famous for chronicling the average lives of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant folks over his career, probably most notably with his script for LOVE LETTERS.  ON THE VERGE THEATRE company has chosen Gurney’s 1998 work FAR EAST to launch this year’s season at their newly chosen home location the Alta Arts.  Houston theater legend Ron Jones helms this clean and precise production that examines what it meant to be white and in the military in the 50s.  An era after the Allied victory of World War II and well before the chaos of the Vietnam conflict.  It was a good time for white people, but they still somehow struggled with what it meant to be them in a foreign place that forced them to confront their own hypocrisy and lack of depth.  

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FAR EAST almost feels like a cover version of Puccini’s MADAME BUTTERFLY or perhaps a riff on FROM HERE TO ETERNITY when you consider how two narratives weave together.  It is about a young naval officer who is stationed in Japan, and promptly meets and falls in love with a Japanese girl of meager means.  It somehow bothers his commanding officer’s wife, and she begins to show an unusual amount of interest in their affair.  She goes so far as to write to his family of his new love interest, and she herself makes a play for his affection.  She is harboring demons of her own, and the play sets out to unveil those.  In a subplot there is another naval officer being blackmailed by his male Japanese lover over US secrets. All of this comes to a head in FAR EAST, and we find out the destinies of everyone involved.    

 Ron Jones directs with his signature fluidity and grace, a mastermind of stagecraft that brings the constructed theatricality this one demands.  The set is a series of blank stark white Japanese Shoji screens that slide open and shut or function as landings for projections.  It is wonderfully serene, and delivered immaculately by Santiago Sepeda. An unseen Taiko drummer (Natalie Hudson or Andrew Klarer) accompanies all the action.  Stage hands Kari Leija and Alexander Uribe come in and out in all black placing sparse white decor around the stage.  Nova Wang sits off to the side in authentic Japanese dress (thanks to costume designer Melinda Beckham-Cone), and she plays all incidental characters from there as “the reader”.  There is a strong feeling of ceremony, and an effort to make FAR EAST feel like another world entirely.  

All of this makes you believe the world will boil over, yet somehow this tea ceremony of a show stays staid and dispassionate. Brock Huerter plays young naval officer Sparky Watts, and we are never sure if he is truly in love with his Japanese girlfriend or merely trying to defy his upper crust upbringing back in Milwaukee.  Even when he is supposedly tempted by the passions of Leslie Lenert as Julia Anderson (his captain’s wife), he remains inscrutable as to keep us guessing  if he has any real feelings. He’s pretty to look at in his “oh so tight” dress whites, but we never feel any heat coming off him about anything.  Leslie Lenert as the troubled naval officer’s wife wears a bit more emotion on her well-dressed sleeve, but even those slight pangs hardly hit any highs of histrionics.  Maybe they are playing to the idea that WASPs have few visible feelings.  They are made of glass people, and not the fragile kind.  They are shiny, thick, and very heavy.  

Jason Duga as Captain Anderson plays a wider range of emotions, going from stern taskmaster to brotherly conspirator with charming ease.  We like him a great deal as an audience because he seems so accessible and easier to read than anyone around him.  He’s someone we would share a beer with. Christian Tammous plays the put upon Bob Munger, the naval officer with a revealed homosexual affair that threatens his career.  He smiles his way through most of his troubles as if his character has given up on caring where the sword falls.  He’s just happy to be.  He knows he is doomed, but doesn’t seem too miffed by it.  

The thing about FAR EAST is the emotional stakes are never high.  Unlike MADAME BUTTERFLY where we are faced with a scorned woman and an illegitimate child, here we never see the soldier’s Japanese lover.  And contrasted with FROM HERE TO ETERNITY where an affair is consummated on a wildly active beach, the soldier and his captain’s wife merely brush against each other almost politely rather than passionately.  These white people are trapped in a Japanese ceremony of screens, drums, and kabuki traditions, but it is them that feel as if they are on some sort of ritualistic autopilot.  Is that the point here?  That even though naval officer Sparky Watts has come to this place to have adventures and learn new things, he is trapped in the end by his upbringing to only be a placid Protestant?  I loved FAR EAST’s sense of theatricality and ritual.  It is beautiful to look at.  The cast are all very easy on the eyes, and the sets and costumes all give it a high sheen of perfection.  Nothing ever pokes through the artifice though.  We never feel the thrill of an emotion that can not be contained.  It is measured and reserved, much like the people in Japan often strive to be in their presentation.  The white folk seem to have perfected it.  

FAR EAST runs at Alta Arts at 5412 Ashbrook Drive through September 17th.  Tickets are available through the ON THE VERGE Company’s web site.

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