THEATER REVIEW : ‘Asian Men’ Closes After Much Ado About Nothing

Performers do not, as a rule, shout “fire” in a crowded theater. But in “Everything You Wanted to Know About Asian Men,” the performance piece that closed Sunday at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, an actor shouted it while running naked through the aisles.

Perhaps he could not help himself. This same actor, Hung Nguyen, inserted a note in the program criticizing the producers for “censoring” his desire to incorporate on-stage urination in his work.

How dare they! The public display of bodily function would have been the perfect capstone to a show that allowed 11 ensemble members to express themselves ad infinitum, even if they had nothing of consequence to say.

A series of inchoate and painfully long-winded monologues, interspersed with forgettable video segments, “Asian Men” almost played like a parody of politically correct performance art. Needless to say, the title promised a lot more than the show delivered.

In one bit, Alex Luu, who also directed, performed a monologue about a run-in with a rude clerk in a toy store. Luu’s narrator angrily attributed this incident to anti-Asian bias. We were not supposed to question that conclusion, even though there was absolutely no evidence to back it up.

The ensemble rambled on endlessly, dishing out maudlin reminiscence (e.g., a tribute to a boyhood friend who died young) and ethnic consciousness-raising (e.g., the indignities of citizenship tests for naturalized immigrants).

The best--or at least the most stageworthy--bit came from Nguyen himself, whose fiery tale of gay self-exploration provided the evening’s few moments of intentional humor.