Sab Shimono Makes Adjustments for Role in ‘The Wash’ at Taper

Sab Shimono says humor is the key to unlocking the soul of a character. But it’s been difficult for him to find anything humorous about the character he portrays in the play, “The Wash,” now at the Mark Taper Forum.

In Philip Kan Gotanda’s drama, Shimono plays Nobu, a grouchy sixtysomething Japanese-American, separated from his wife and from his daughter because she married an African-American.

“I have played bad guys in the movies,” Shimono says. But, he says, it’s totally different to play one on stage. “When you do a play, you got to get into the person. Finding Nobu was quite difficult. In rehearsal, I try to find something about a character that I like. Once I found the humor, things started working for me. I think I am now on the right track.”

Shimono, who appeared on Broadway in the musicals “Mame” and “Pacific Overtures” and in the films “Presumed Innocent” and “Come See the Paradise,” has been involved with “The Wash” since its first workshop in the mid-’80s. He appeared in the 1988 American Playhouse-produced feature version and the off-Broadway production last fall.

Until the New York production, though, Shimono played the role of Sadao, the jovial widower who falls in love with Nobu’s estranged wife. George Takei of “Star Trek” fame is Sadao in the Taper production.

It was Gotanda’s decision to have Shimono switch roles. “It was a challenge,” says Shimono, “because he is so unlike me. Most people I have played are unlike me, but I like to talk a lot. All of a sudden sometimes (as Nobu) I feel like my older brother talking.”

Shimono, who is over a decade younger than Nobu, says men find the Nobu character hits uncomfortably close to home. “But one of the nicest compliments I got was when this lady came backstage and said, ‘Gee, you’re so young.’ And I said, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’