THEATER REVIEW : Troupe Goes ‘Offshore’ for Timely Talk

When it comes to the subject of free trade, the San Francisco Mime Troupe has plenty to say.

Uniting physical comedy with dialogue, song and dance, “Offshore,” the troupe’s latest creation, began a tour of Southern California last week with a performance at UC Santa Barbara that was both amusing and thoughtful. This outspoken, richly layered satire--which comes to UC Irvine tonight--assaults the bloodless abstraction of economic rhetoric with a relentless focus on the human consequences of the global marketplace.

With impressive versatility, the six cast members don multiple roles in a dizzying web of five stories loosely connected by the theme of international trade.

In Tokyo, a Japanese tycoon (Les J.N. Mau) and a U.S. trade negotiator (Douglas Fields) square off over protectionist tariffs. The tycoon’s daughter (Keiko Shimosato), a talented artist, must decide whether to sacrifice her career and accept a loveless, politically expedient marriage “for the good of Japan.” Meanwhile, her lover (Rebecca Klingler), an expatriate American bar hostess, plies a little “free trade” of her own as she combs the Tokyo clubs seeking her Mr. Big.

In the United States, a microchip manufacturer (Klingler) grapples with competing Japanese below-cost market saturation, while a pushy but incurably gauche Chinese American wanna-be entrepreneur (Kelvin Han-Yee) puts together a deal that would relocate the factory to China--provided he can bribe the required official (Mau).

From the sidelines, commentary from a farmer-turned-security guard (Daniel Chumley) and a homeless scam artist (Fields) drives home the powerlessness of the 80% at the bottom of the economic ladder. “I don’t know what this means,” goes the continuing refrain at each new turn of events, “but I know it’s not good for me.”

You probably can gather that this vision of the New World Order is no facile multicultural melting pot--the transcontinental links in “Offshore” reveal the world as one big dysfunctional family. As these characters try to fashion their individual compromises between personal gratification and social responsibility, they find themselves torn apart by their own divided loyalties.

Betrayal is the inevitable result.

Though “Offshore” moves us most often to laughter, there are moments of heartbreaking eloquence--when the artist discovers that her father has sold out the rice farmers, or when the Chinese official sings of the price his nation must pay to provide the world’s cheap labor and lax environmental safeguards: “Open door! Let me fly to the top of the world to see the shining coins floating down the heavy metal river.”

The theme of East-West relations allows the troupe to explore the common links between its own tradition--the exaggerated, highly stylized movements of commedia dell’arte street theater--and Kabuki and Beijing opera. Wide-eyed slapstick and subtle, symbolic hand positions share the stage without clash or pretension.

The timing couldn’t be more apt, yet the troupe didn’t set out to create a piece about NAFTA. It’s a good thing Al Gore won’t have to debate these people--Kabuki probably isn’t his strong suit.