‘WASH’ AND ‘LEGENDS’: A BOX SCORE OF CONTRASTS

Directors and dramaturges will tell you that the basic job in working with a playwright on an untried script is to “find the play”--that is, to track down the story that seems to be asking to be told here, as distinct from the one that the playwright may think he has written.

Of the two plays that closed out the Mark Taper Forum’s “In the Works ‘85” festival over the weekend, Philip Kan Gotanda’s “The Wash” seemed closer to having located itself than Kendrew Lascelles’ “Legends.”

Certainly it was the easier for the audience to locate. In each case, someone stood up at the post-performance discussion and said that this was the best play of the festival. But “The Wash” seemed to strike home to more listeners, which was interesting in that its characters were Asian, as opposed to the mostly Anglo characters in “Legends.”

But the characters in “The Wash” lived in California, while “Legends” took place in the African bush. And the father and mother in “The Wash” (Mako and Shizuko Hoshi) were a couple that everyone recognized, possibly from family experience; while the trader and the movie star in “Legends” (Howard Witt and Frances Lee McCain) remained figures of romance, for all Lascelles’ attempt to show them as all-too-human.

“Legends” also made use of a slave-trading scheme, a famine, a massacre, a harem and even a diamond bracelet. It didn’t turn these things into melodrama (most of them were kept offstage) but there was a certain calculation to the plot. In contrast, “The Wash” didn’t seem to have a plot at all. It was simply tracking a process--that of a man and a woman slowly turning away from each other once they had raised their children.

Another difference was the pitch of the dialogue. In “The Wash,” people tended to say only what the occasion called for, and in Papa’s case less. (Silence was one of the strongest tools when it came to cowing Mama, whose action in the play is to learn to break her own silence.)

“Legends,” in contrast, was very much a play of speeches, with the trader and the film star trying to gain the upper hand by means of words. Sincere ones, to be sure (particularly when she tells him what it was like to hold a dying baby as she tried to film a public-service TV spot on the famine.) But highly conscious ones.

“Legends” came off as a rational, left-brain sort of play, while “The Wash” came off as an emotional, right-brain one. At this point, “The Wash” is the more satisfactory, not because of its genre, but because it represents its genre more fully. We live the experience of its characters, and that’s enough.

“Legends,” though, seems to want to start us thinking about issues like colonialism, imperialism and the strange kind of foreign “aid” that actually encourages the demise of thousands of people. As director Robert Egan said at the post-play discussion, it’s a political play, even though it doesn’t seem to have a political program. Perhaps that’s what’s missing about it--why its characters don’t pay off either as people or as symbols of different approaches to ordering the world.

Both plays have in common a slow first act, followed by a second act that rises in energy, clarity and rooting interest. (“The Wash” went into rehearsals as a long one-act, and perhaps director Barbara Damashek should have kept to that form.)

Each play was also beautifully performed, with Mako particularly believable as Papa, so weighed down in outmoded patriarchal rigidity that he’s paralyzed when Mama goes off with another man (Sab Shimono.) It’s all very well to say that Americans overdo plays about relationships, but the bent of our talent does seem to lie in that direction. ‘THE WASH’

Philip Kan Gotanda’s play, part of New Theatre for Now’s “In the Works ‘85” festival at the Mark Taper Forum. Director Barbara Damashek. Set Michael Devine. Costumes Elizabeth Palmer. Lighting Paulie Jenkins. Incidental musical Barbara Damashek. Sound Daniel Birnbaum. Dramaturge Corey Beth Madden. Stage manager Tami Toon. Production assistant Alicia C. Heffernan. Assistant to the director Nancy Simon. With Mako, Shizuko Hoshi, Kim Miyori, Rosalind Chao, June Kim, Sab Shimono, Momo Yashima, Daniel Kuramoto. ‘LEGENDS’

Kendrew Lascelles’ play, also at the Taper. Director Robert Egan. Set Michael Devine. Costumes Grania O’Connor. Lighting Paulie Jenkins. Sound Daniel Birnbaum. Dramaturge Jack Viertel. Stage manager Mary Michele Miner. Production assistant Carole Beams. Assistant to the director Brian Kulick. With Howard Witt, Frances Lee McCain, Monique Mannen and J.C. Quinn.