Review: DRAGON LADY at Geffen Playhouse

If you think your own family is…choose your euphemistic adjective…colorful, sprawling, embarrassing, unique, just plain nuts or any combination thereof, Sara Porkalob would like to introduce you to her clan, and she’s probably got you one-upped. DRAGON LADY, the one-person (and three-musician) story centered around the matriarch of the Porkalobs is an affecting musical journey across three generations of a Filipino family. Porkalob plays her grandmother, Maria Porkalob Sr. the DL of the title, as well as her mother, herself, a bunch of aunts and uncles, and a gangster or two. In the rendering of this tale, she sings -  quite vibrantly - original airs written by her band leader Pete Irving and some era standards. Here a “Gangsta’s Paradise,” there a “Blue Bayou,” everywhere a “Love for Sale.”

In its L.A. premiere at The Geffen Playhouse directed by Andrew Russell, DRAGON LADY is every inch an homage to Maria Sr., who died in 2022, but also to resilience – Maria’s, her daughter’s and that of immigrant families like the Porkalobs who led a hardscrabble life. We get a whiff of what we’re in for from the moment granny Maria Sr. on the eve of her 60th birthday party hustles her favorite granddaughter down to the basement fires up her karaoke machine and begins her tale with the time she instructed her daughter – Sara’s mother, then under 10 years of age - to exact revenge on a neighborhood girl by killing her with a golf club.

During her late teens, Maria Sr. worked in a nightclub in Manilla. Tabbed by the club owner both because of her looks and because she could sing, Maria becomes the  star attraction who nabs the attention first of a notorious gang boss and later of an quickly besotted soldier named Porkalob. Ultimately we follow Maria Sr. across the world to America where her luck changes, more than once.

The action cuts between young Maria Sr.’s education in the ways of the world in Manilla and 15 years later as her eldest daughter, Maria Jr. – age 15 – is at home in a trailer park in Bremerton Washington taking care of her three siblings while their mom is working multiple jobs or staying out late with men. Abandoned by the aforementioned Porkalob, Maria Sr. and her kids are dirt poor, hungry and a click away from having their lights turned off. At one point, Maria Jr.’s younger brothers get it in their heads to borrow some Boy Scout uniforms from a friend and go door to door for a “food drive” to feed the family. Watching Porkalob crawl inside the skins these two little boys who are playing the part of super heroes while actually being heroic is to take a wicked cool journey, the kind that only happens in live theater.

Irving and bandmates Jimmy Austin and Mickey Stylin are on stage working their notes behind a scrim-like partition. But the story is driven entirely by Porkalob who – though alone on stage for the entire two-hour duration - morphs herself into a slew of different personas, old and young, Filipino and not. The performance nails the fears of adolescence of a young girl who has to grow up too soon (experienced by both the senior and junior Marias) and the toughness and resignation of a woman of middle age largely cast aside by her family and coming to terms with the results of her choices. Post-intermission, when Maria Jr. takes over the narrative, we get a new perspective on things, and ultimately a reckoning.

When she takes the stage for her curtain call, an exhausted and triumphant Porkalob thanks the audience for their presence. Indeed, the pleasure is all ours. And Porkalob is in no way done with recounting her family’s sage. Parts two of her Dragon Cycle, DRAGON MAMA, has already hit the boards and DRAGON BABY is in development. Hopefully we'll get them here in L.A. soon. 

DRAGON LADY plays through Oct. 6 at 10886 Le Conte Avenue., L.A. 

Photo of Sara Porkalob by Jeff Lorch

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