STAGE REVIEW : ‘Porcelain’: Crime of Passion at the Burbage

The opening image of four white men in suits surrounding a young Asian man in T-shirt and pants is perhaps unavoidably loaded, but then Chay Yew’s ensemble play at the Burbage Theatre, “Porcelain,” is about fundamental conflicts--between races, between heterosexual and homosexual men, between differing emotional needs.

Yew has said that his play isn’t really about any of these subjects, but about “loving and relationships.” Actually, it’s about all of them, for it’s a big enough play to handle all manner of ideas.

The catalyst is the alleged murder in a public toilet of a white Londoner by his Asian lover, John Lee (Garrett Richard Wang).

Lee is interrogated not by detectives but by a psychologist (Lee Ryan) with his own share of flaws, including a nasty homophobic streak. In the tradition of advocacy drama, the patient’s nimble mind gets the better of the doctor’s, but they still find a way of getting through to each other.

And yet this doesn’t really indicate the nature of Yew’s achievement, which is to send the basic elements through a narrative prism, fracturing the bits and pieces across time and space, and spoken by Lee and four “voices” (Ryan, Mark Hattan, Arne Andersen, Keith Burns).

It’s why “Porcelain,” which ironically began as a film script, would make a fine radio play: The voices shift from a flurry of news sound bites, to metaphorical fables, to interviews with men-on-the-street. The breadth of Yew’s coverage suggests that everyone is involved in this crime, while never letting Lee off the hook.

With Ivan Spiegel’s staging, though, Yew doesn’t have the ensemble his play demands. It’s a disciplined unit only part of the time, very shaky in the dialect department, with Ryan especially prone to telegraphing the doctor’s own problems.

Wang telegraphs nothing, allowing Lee’s passions and fears to slowly come to form like one of the many origami cranes he creates during the performance. He is a strong center of gravity in a production that could use strength across the board.

“Porcelain,” Burbage Theatre, 2330 Sawtelle Blvd., West Los Angeles. Fridays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Ends Feb. 27. $15; (310) 478-0897. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.