Yew’s ‘Whitelands’: Where Culture, Personality Meet

Most of Chay Yew’s characters feel twice separated from mainstream Western culture: They’re gay, and their family heritage is Chinese.

Some of these young men don’t perceive themselves as Chinese--they’re second-generation. But their outsider credentials have prompted them to examine intensely the intersections of culture and personality.

This examination takes the form of three plays in Yew’s “Whitelands,” now at East West Players. The plays can be seen individually on weeknights or together in weekend marathons. Themes recur, but characters don’t.

The final play, “Half Lives,” is brand-new. It’s also the weakest of the three. “Porcelain” was produced in Los Angeles in 1993, while “A Language of Their Own”--the apex of the trilogy--was staged here in 1994.

“Porcelain” comes first. It’s the story of John (Alec Mapa, baby-faced and magnetic), 19-year-old son of a Chinese restaurant owner (Tom Donaldson) in London. John won’t study at Cambridge in the fall as planned. He’s in prison, charged with murdering his lover, William Hope (Thomas Weber), a 26-year-old white man, in a public lavatory.

John is guilty--the only question is why he did it. As a court-appointed psychiatrist (Tom Jameson) interviews the prisoner--and is questioned in turn by a sleazy television producer (Phil Oakley)--the answer comes out. A sense of racial isolation drove John to seek sex in the colorblind world of the public toilets. But the men there often are ashamed of being gay. When Hope briefly appeared to take John seriously, it obviously wouldn’t last. John couldn’t accept this.

Despite the fragility of the title, “Porcelain” is a vigorous play, dynamically staged by Tim Dang. Four actors, who play several roles each, swirl around John, who remains at the center. The only problem is that Yew lays on excessive symbolism, with one lyrical analogy after another. Also, an occasional speech spells everything out too explicitly.

John seems unrealistically alone, as if there isn’t another gay Asian man around. Yew remedied this in “A Language of Their Own,” although the scene shifts to Boston from England. At first, two Chinese American men--Oscar (Steve Park) and Ming (Eric Steinberg)--narrate and discuss their romance: from breakup back to the beginning, then back to the breakup and beyond. Later, Oscar finds new love with Daniel (Radmar Agana Jao), a Filipino student, while Ming moves to Venice, Calif., with his new flame, Robert (Ben Shepard), who is white.

Yew has his characters explain it all for us, even more directly than in “Porcelain.” But the language is more sophisticated. The characters are capable of more self-analysis, and the language of lovers is one of the play’s subjects. The quicksilver turns of the narrative flow with the grace of an expert downhill skier.

The characterizations are much richer than in the other plays. Oscar--the more bottled-up, self-consciously Chinese man of the first act--is HIV positive. The more expressive, self-consciously American Ming wants to stand by his man. But as the play darkens, he wanders. Steinberg makes sure Ming charms us at first, so that he ultimately disappoints us as much as himself.

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Yew doesn’t establish this initial sympathy with at least two of the three characters in “Half Lives,” his latest play. In fact, the title could refer to the stunted writing as much as to the characters’ stunted lives.

“Half Lives” is a family play, set within the context of a proposal for a movie, being pitched by the son (Mapa). In quick strokes we hear how his father (Dana Lee), a Chinese American architect, met his mother (Tsai Chin) in Singapore. When she told him she was pregnant, he married her and brought her back to L.A., where the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Soon it looks as if the marriage might end as well.

The son has one happy, bland memory--watching sunsets over the ocean with his father. The rest is bad news. The parents reject his homosexuality, and he runs off to hustle sex on Santa Monica Boulevard. The father’s Whitelands mall collapses, resulting in scandal. The mother feels oppressed. Eviction and suicide follow.

It’s all too much for the slender structure of this shortest of the three plays. Everything feels sketchy and rushed. Indeed, it’s like the scenario of the bad movie that you might expect the son to pitch. The son is hateful and the father is blank. Only the mother gets to successfully fill in a few details--which Chin does as well as can be expected.

The plays share a simple set, and Emily Ruiz’s costumes are in a variety of reds, grays and blacks. Dang directed all three.

* “Whitelands,” East West Players, 4424 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. Marathon performances Saturdays-Sundays, 2-10 p.m. (dinner break, 6-8 p.m.). Dark April 20. Ends April 21. $50. Single shows: Part I (“Porcelain”), Wednesdays, 8 p.m., ends April 17, runs 1 hour, 30 minutes; Part II (“A Language of Their Own”), Thursdays, 8 p.m.; ends April 18, runs 2 hours, 5 minutes; Part III (“Half Lives”), Fridays, 8 p.m.; ends April 19, runs 1 hour, 20 minutes. $20 each. (213) 660-0366.