STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • David Coddon Fiction
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

Cambodia’s Chambers of Darkness explored

1/1/2013

0 Comments

 
​Playwright David Wiener’s Extraordinary Chambers may not be altogether extraordinary (it’s the least bit overwrought in places), but it is a tense, contemplative work comprised of moments that chill you to the marrow. Like when the bespectacled Cambodian guide Sopoan (Albert Park) recounts hiding his glasses from the Khmer Rouge, to whom reading was a crime worthy of execution. Or when the naïve American businessman Carter Dean (Manny Fernandes) first confronts the horrifying truth about his host in Phnom Penh, Dr. Heng (Greg Watanabe). The impact of these revelations linger.
            In Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company’s production of Extraordinary Chambers at the 10th Avenue Theatre downtown, you become immersed in Wiener’s narrative – a story of restless strangers in a strange land – only to learn just as Carter and his wife do that the victims and survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime are omnipresent, in flesh or in spirit. Though an estimated 1.7 million (the number is probably much higher) died in the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields in the ‘70s, this incredibly grim chapter in human history remains obscure to many people. Extraordinary Chambers (the title refers to a tribunal empowered to bring culpable Khmer Rouge members to justice) is a potent reminder.
            Mo’olelo’s Seema Sueko directs a committed cast highlighted by Watanabe, who in a previous Geffen Playhouse production of Extraordinary Chambers portrayed Sopoan and here tackles Dr. Heng, and Esther K. Chae, an enigmatic and secretive presence as Heng’s wife, Rom Chang. Fernandes and Erika Beth Phillips as Carter’s wife, Mara, are less engrossing figures, but how they grapple with the story’s questions of loss, longing, moral conscience and guilt is central to understanding why what happened in Cambodia is not just a tragedy for the Cambodians.
            Albert Park’s Sopoan speaks for the haunted and tortured for whom the killing fields will never be as fleeting as a nightmare. His well-timed monologues and his second-act interrogation speak to the desperation and devastation that the Khmer Rouge left in its wake. His is also this production’s most understated and ultimately resonant performance.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is theater critic for San Diego CityBeat

    Archives

    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • David Coddon Fiction
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page