Review: THE OLDEST BOY at The Jungle Theater

Sarah Ruhl's recent play THE OLDEST BOY puts a contemporary mother's dilemma at the center of the story. This is not the only radical thing about the show. It also includes depiction of a live birth on stage, carefully staged so as not to offend audience sensibilities. (We seem remarkably at ease with graphic depictions of death on stage but very squeamish about birth. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.) And it steps directly into the treacherous but vital terrain of cross-cultural connection, conflict, and appropriation.

Imagine: you have a nearly three year old son you adore, born of a love match with a man you never expected to marry. In fact, you were both engaged to other people when you met. He's Tibetan, and you're white. You're trying to manage marriage and motherhood as you've come unmoored from your professional path, with the death of your academic mentor. You thought you wanted a Ph.D. in literature, but now you're not so sure writing books about books has any value.

You're deeply attached to your child, yet you're genuinely drawn by the Buddhist ideal of detachment. When the play opens, you're sitting in your living room while your son naps, baby monitor nearby, trying to meditate, but you're too restless to center. When you open your eyes and see the audience, you turn your back on us, but that doesn't really solve the problem. So you give up and retrieve the potato chip bag you've hidden in the sofa pillows for a snack.

It's clear you're facing plenty of real challenges in present day America even before the knock on the door comes and you meet two Tibetans, a Lama and a monk. They've come to test your boy to see if he is the reincarnation of a great Tibetan teacher...and should therefore return to the Tibetan community in exile in India to begin his education.

The characters in this play are identified by type, not personal names. In the Jungle Theater production, Christina Baldwin brings existential restlessness coupled with awkward grace to the central role of Mother. Randy Reyes plays her husband, Father, with a combination of grounded practicality and submission to fate. The Oldest Boy, the child reincarnation of a high Lama, is played by a puppet, brought to life with great sensitivity by puppeteer Masanari Kawahara, who also embodies the grown Lama at a few critical moments. Kawahara literally breathes with the puppet and the tenderness that he generates interacting with the parents is moving.

Tsering Dorjee Bawa (graduate of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dharamsala, India, TIPA, which was founded in 1959 by the Dalai Lama) served as cultural consultant on this production, as well as playing a monk. He's consulted on all productions of this play to date. Doubtless his coaching was key to the production's efforts to avoid misappropriating Tibetan ritual and belief while wading directly into the cultural quagmire central to the plot. (To my inexpert eye, director Sarah Rasmussen has succeeded in this goal, but others with more expertise in Tibetan Buddhism might disagree.)

The play is subtitled "A Play in Three Ceremonies" and includes Tibetan dance and ritual, performed in part by Yeshi Samdup, who also studied at TIPA. Long time Minneapolis-based actor Eric 'Pogi' Sumangil carries the crucial role of the Lama who is in search of his reincarnated teacher with humor and warmth. Perhaps he's watched the Dalai Lama for a sense of how this is done.

The Jungle Theater prides itself on connections to its neighborhood, and describes this show as a partnership with the local (and large) Tibetan community. It may not be coincidental that a real life variant on the story at hand is unfolding in the Twin Cities: a local boy born to Tibetan parents has been identified as a reincarnated Lama, and is undergoing rigorous training in traditions, scriptures, and languages, while also attending local public school and building his Pokemon collection. He turns ten in December, and his parents are struggling with the question of whether it is time for him to enter the prestigious monastery in India that has accepted him.

Act Two opens up the world of the play with a lovely reveal that I choose not to describe, so as not to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that playwright Ruhl solves the second act problem by NOT trying to wrap things up neatly and explain all of what is happening. The play ends with mysteries intact but a strong sense of a spiritual journey underway for the Mother at the center, in the context of a long, rich, and impersonal tradition about divining how to live well.

Ruhl is wonderfully bold in her choice of subjects: you may remember her play IN THE NEXT ROOM, OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award Nominee for Best New Play. That's just one example of her ambitious reach.

She also has a knack for writing punchy lines. Here are a few from this show: "Americans like to choose things." "Translation is a little like reincarnation." "The cruel animal fact of motherhood is bigger than any idea." Any of these could launch a worthy and lengthy train of thought. That she produces such gems within the context of big tapestries of ideas or historical contemplations or cross-cultural explorations makes it clear why she was awarded a Macarthur 'genius' grant in 2006.

THE OLDEST BOY runs at the Jungle Theater through December 18.

photo credit: Dan Norman

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