STAGE REVIEW : ‘Fish Head’ Flounders in Excess

The poisons of acculturation are infecting “Fish Head Soup,” the latest play by Philip Kan Gotanda to arrive in Los Angeles via a two-year journey that began in Berkeley.

This piece by the author of “Yankee Dawg You Die” (Los Angeles Theatre Center, 1988) and “The Wash” (Mark Taper Forum, 1991) is a great leap forward--a more complex play than either of its predecessors. But, despite two years of simmering down since its initial launching at the Berkeley Rep, the play is still floating in too much fat.

Too bad, because the piece that opened Thursday at the Silver Lake district’s East West Players draws on elements Gotanda explored in “The Wash,” “Dog” and his earlier “Song for a Nisei Fisherman,” processed here in much more expressionistic style.

Magic Realism comes closest to describing “Fish Head Soup’s” mix of reality and abstraction. The play is a stew of autobiographical and universal experience that speaks not only to the complexities of cultural dispossession--the disorienting loss of identity that occurs in the act of uprooting and transplanting--but also to the aftershocks of being nonwhite in a white society. Such loss of self-image, Gotanda tells us, translates into violence.

It is also what causes the Japanese-American family in “Fish Head Soup” to come apart at the seams. Papa (Sab Shimono) has become mentally abstracted, a condition triggered, we are told, by the sudden “death” of his son Mat (Stan Egi). Mama (Nobu McCarthy) can’t cope. She has a job and her excuse for putting in long hours is that they need the money. But has anyone noticed that her hours linger deep into the night?

As a result, it has fallen to their other son Victor (Nelson Mashita) to be Papa’s primary caretaker. A chastened Vietnam vet who suffered his share of racial indignities in the army, Victor has a small job driving Japanese tourists for a Japanese hotel. But his chief preoccupation, beyond Papa, seems to be fixing the house that, like the family, is also falling apart.

David Hoffman’s fine set--two rooms surrounded by water and flanked by what look like torn sails blowing in the wind--plays off of all this obvious symbolism: A family adrift and cut off within the culture. R. Stephen Hoyes’ lighting informs reality versus dream, and Gino Cheung and David Wong’s sound, as well as Dan Kuramoto’s original music, enhance the mood.

When Mat, who was thought drowned (details of that death are murky), reappears, the effect is volcanic. He’s the walking embodiment of cultural repression poised to erupt, and the household’s hitherto tenuous balance of normality and denial is forever shattered.

In Mat’s coruscating presence, Mama’s secrets unravel, Victor’s inferiority complexes overflow and the riven nuclear unit is shaken to its foundations by a pernicious, devouring anguish that feeds on itself. A staggering final scene pits this shambles against an image of happier days in which Papa serves his papa’s symbolic fish head soup to his once-contented family.

It’s a wrenching sequence, but also overwrought and distended. Director Oskar Eustis, who staged the original Berkeley Rep production of “Fish Head Soup” (and who just finished staging the signal “Angels in America” at the Mark Taper Forum), has not been tough enough on his playwright.

While the core of the play as described is dramatically stunning, it is too self-absorbed and smothered in nonessentials. It ends at least three times before it ends. At nearly three hours (with two intermissions) the piece is badly bloated, with excess and repetition diminishing its effect.

Otherwise, Eustis’ staging in East West’s confining playing space makes good use of a variety of devices to separate present from past. Shimono, seen in so many Gotanda plays, is indelible as the distracted Papa, and both Mashita and Egi--as flip sides of the same coin--deliver rigorous performances, by turns moving and stern.

McCarthy seemed to struggle with the early scenes Thursday, apparently uneasy with the furtive, talkative Mama. But as the emotional vise intensified its hold, she merged with the role, becoming as compelling in her final revelations as the rest of the company.

Despite its top-heaviness, “Fish Head Soup” remains Gotanda’s most difficult and intriguing work to date, impressive in its articulation of crucial and often subliminal issues. But before its next go around (productions are planned for San Francisco, Seattle and New York) it must lose at least 30 minutes and an intermission.

Gotanda expects to direct the San Francisco production, which puts him in the position of pressuring himself to chip away at his play. If he musters the resolve to do so, he may find that what’s left in his “Soup” is pure protein.

“Fish Head Soup,” East West Players, 4424 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, noon. Ends Feb. 21. $18-$20; (213) 660-0366. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.

Stan Egi: Mat

Nelson Mashita: Victor

Nobu McCarthy: Mama (Dorothy)

Sab Shimono: Papa

An East West Players presentation in association with Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum. Producer Nelson Handel. Director Oskar Eustis. Playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. Sets David Hoffman. Lights R. Stephen Hoyes. Costumes Christina Souza. Sound Gino Cheung, David Wong. Original music Dan Kuramoto. Fight direction Randy Kovitz. Stage manager Yuki Nakamura.