Timeless ‘Kokoro’ Goes to Heart of Mother’s Woes

When cultures collide, the resulting derailment can have tragic consequences. In her “Kokoro (True Heart)” at the Odyssey Theatre, Velina Hasu Houston explores Japanese and American ethnic distinctions to often stunning effect.

“Tea,” Houston’s most famous play, concerns a group of Japanese American matrons, former war brides who are struggling to cope with the suicide of an outcast contemporary. “Kokoro” is more chronological than the nonlinear “Tea,” but it deals with similar themes of suicide, ethnic displacement and female subjugation, couched in an atmosphere of magical realism and the supernatural. The line between the quick and the dead is a fine one in Houston’s cosmology, where spirits wander freely and the afterlife seamlessly melds with the now.

It’s difficult to wrap an Americanized mind around the Japanese practice of oyako shinju (parent-child suicide). Yasako (Lily Mariye) may have lived in the United States for six years now, but oyako shinju--killing herself and her 7-year-old daughter--seems the only logical and honorable escape from her disintegrating marriage to Hiro (Yuji Okumoto). For Yasako, such a drastic act is not an ending, but a spiritual journey that will reunite her and her daughter with their loved ones in the beyond.

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The first act unfolds with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, ending with a scene as lyrically terrible as it is cathartic. When Yasako survives her suicide attempt, she faces a murder charge for the death of her daughter. The second act occasionally lapses into melodrama as Yasako struggles with the American legal system, the media furor resulting from her act, and her own frustrated yearning for self-annihilation.

As the action begins, three large scrolls of diaphanous material spiral upward--a visual metaphor that primes us for our entrance into Houston’s heightened reality. Don Llewelyn and Joel Leslie Froomkin’s spare set design, Kathi O’Donohue’s mellow lighting and Andrea Centazzo’s haunting original score beautifully emphasize the play’s metaphysical nature.

Director Jan Lewis serves up Houston’s drama with the spareness and reserve of a Japanese tea ceremony. However, as Houston’s dialogue becomes more florid, Lewis’ hand sometimes falters. Delicate yet fierce, Mariye’s Yasako, an isolated, essentially voiceless woman steeped in ancestral tradition, is wrenching in her complexity.

Okumoto plays Yasako’s philandering husband with a conviction and pathos that shore up his character’s muddled motivations. Bonnie Oda Homsey, who also choreographed, dances the part of Yasako’s dead mother with eerie concentration and balletic grace.

Despite her infrequent slips into excess, Houston creates a timeless, timely parable of mother love and a woman wronged, as the voiceless Yasako finally expresses herself in dreadful action.

* “Kokoro (True Heart),” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. May 5 and 19, 3 p.m. Ends May 26. $17.50-$21.50. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.