Daniela (Cindy Cheung) and her mother, Roberta (Jon Norman Schneider), prep a family party in Mia Chung’s Catch as Catch Can.
Riding a risky wave of experimental casting, three Asian-American actors defy gender, age, ethnicity and a law or two of physics in Mia Chung’s comedy-drama, Catch as Catch Can. Without the aid of costume change, and only occasional differences in lighting, the three performers inhabit six closely linked characters, gliding in and out of each.
It’s a production that asks a lot from its director, former Soho Rep artistic director Daniel Aukin, and even more from the audience. The work’s intent—to ponder identity and explore the value of family—often risks getting lost amid the hubbub. But the pleasures, in the form of cleverly staged interactions, sudden realizations, and a little showing off from the cast as well as the playwright, make it worth the effort. Catch it if you can.
Roberta (Schneider, left) and her husband Lon (Cheung) make it clear who wears the pants in the family.
It takes a little time to figure out just who is who and what is where. (I was locked in after about the first half hour; your mileage may vary.) The opening scene is perhaps the most disorienting. Two male actors sit at a table, portraying women twice their age. They are Roberta (Jon Norman Schneider) and her close friend, Theresa (Rob Yang). They chitchat over tea, mostly on the topic of Britain’s royal family, but also about their adult children’s complicated romances. Roberta is Italian-American, Theresa is Irish-American, and they live in a working-class neighborhood somewhere outside Boston, yet their accents smack more of New Rochelle than New England. The tone is decidedly sitcom, which works against the empathy that is called for when family matters turn more serious.
Theresa, a widow, has two grown boys: Owen, a black sheep who is unseen, and Tim, who arrives from California for a holiday visit. Tim is also portrayed by Yang: thus, mother and son inhabit the same skin, if not the same temperament. Similarly, Roberta’s son, Robbie, is played by Schneider, who goes from busybody mom to stressed-out divorcée with a straightening of the spine and an angry glower. Cindy Cheung rounds out the cast, portraying both Roberta’s husband, Lon, and their daughter, Daniela.
Each character has his/her/their own cross to bear. Lon has a serious illness that he’s doing his best to ignore. Daniela has dumped her boyfriend and is contemplating a new career. Robbie, who had met his ex-wife while stationed in Korea, is trying to pull his marriage back together from 7,000 miles away. But it is Tim who really stirs the pot on his arrival, claiming that he has a fiancée, who also happens to be Korean. And, as becomes ever more apparent, he is harboring a severe case of depression that will suck everyone around him into its downward spiral. Theresa retreats into icy denial, driving Daniela into a rage:
I used to adore her. She was the survivor. Now she’s this cold, empty shell of a person….
Why have kids if you can’t—this is when you need a mother! He wanted to feel warm again, that’s what he told me. Doesn’t that break your—doesn’t that fucking crucify you?
At its best, as in a holiday party scene with all six characters on board, the production tricks the mind into imagining a stage crowded with actors, and impresses with its playfulness, as when Theresa lets out a shriek and Tim instantly hushes her in the way only an embarrassed son can, or when Tim and Robbie make fun of their mothers by doing impressions of them, hinting at a well-rooted bond between them. It’s self-referential humor with selves that just happen to have dual ownership of a body.
Old friends Theresa (Rob Yang, left) and Roberta (Schneider). Photographs by Joan Marcus.
At other times the playwright is nearly too clever for her own good, conjuring bits of business that demand attention even as they divert it from crucial matters at hand. For instance, Cheung, as Daniela, alone on stage, performs a whipsaw, page-long monologue seemingly in one breath, detailing the mountains of red tape that accompany trying to help in Tim’s recovery from his condition:
“That sounds right, Dr. Vadim, thank you, that’s very clear, so then Effexor definitely wouldn’t be the right thing because then when are the meetings? Um. I’ll take the information, but. I’m sure people find it helpful, but for me, this is not cool, Janine. I know I know I know, but I’m just about to see him and—no, I don’t know the difference between—but he’s not, he’s not a sociopath….”
And, in a difficult scene late in the play, Yang speaks Theresa’s dialog but moves as Tim, Schneider speaks Robert’s dialogue but with Robbie’s physical actions, and Cheung speaks as Lon but moves like Daniela. It’s at once a satisfying gambit that rewards the audience for its attentiveness, and a frustrating distraction. Indeed, more often than not in the evening, the themes that Chung tries to explore are muted, too deeply hidden behind the play’s complex façade.
Catch as Catch Can runs through Nov. 20 at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and information, visit playwrightshorizons.org/shows/plays/catch-catch-can2223/.
