STAGE REVIEW : ‘Tea’ Tells the Tale of Japanese War Brides

Much like the man who must lose his soul before he can find it, many people do not begin to realize how deeply they will miss the traditions of home until they find themselves standing at the prow of a ship, gazing at all they once knew shrinking to a blur on the horizon.

As the land of the immigrants--and consequently that of the homesick--America is full of such tales aching to be told. Many have been heard to the point of cliche; “Tea,” playing at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage through May 8, has not.

In “Tea,” the playwright, Velina Hasu Houston, has tapped into the rich vein of her own mother’s experience as a Japanese war bride to tell the story of five such women who left their native Japan for the United States after marrying American servicemen who were stationed in their country after World War II.

Houston paints a poignant image of loneliness with this small tea-drinking island adrift in a Kansas ocean of middle-American coffee klatches.

It is an image of which the play could use more. Unfortunately, Houston does not let the story tell itself. Each time the women’s conversation begins to relax into a lyricism that makes one hope that the play will at last take flight, Houston crushes her creation with leaden, didactic speeches. Julianne Boyd’s heavy-handed direction further adds to the weight and length of this 90-minute show.

Four Japanese women meet at the home of a fifth, a recent suicide, to drink tea. The fifth, who appears as a ghost, tells us she cannot rest until the women find harmony with one another. Such a message cries out for subtlety, like a silver fish that should be flitting below the surface of the water to be caught only at a final epiphany. No such luck here.

The play picks up in a vignette where the women impersonate their husbands. Gerrielani Miyazaki, who gives a sterling performance as the ghost, is especially chilling when the sheer verbal and physical force of her abusive husband shoot like a dybbuk through her frail, geisha-like figure. However, even this segment hooks up clumsily, as if with reluctance, to the continuing action of the tea ceremony.

“Tea” shows potential in the visuals--from the way these well-defined women exchange glances--apprehensively, defiantly and at times, dangerously--to the eloquence of Cliff Faulkner’s simple tea-drinking set, Peter Maradudin’s smoky lighting and C. L. Hundley’s distinctive costumes.

What the show needs now is another draft showing less matter and more art.

Performances at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays and Sundays at 7 with Saturday-Sunday matinees at 2 until May 8. At the Old Globe Theatre’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage, San Diego.