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Comic Sparks Fly in Lively ‘Burnin’ Love’

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TIMES THEATER CRITIC

Some people feel pressure to marry once out of their 20s. Winston should be so lucky. If he doesn’t marry by his 30th birthday--in four days--he will spontaneously combust. End of matter.

So goes the premise of “Big Hunk O’ Burnin’ Love,” a lively new comedy, the first nonmusical play picked by East West Players to grace their new home, the David Henry Hwang Theater in Little Tokyo. Written by 25-year-old Prince Gomolvilas, “Big Hunk” is a romantic comedy with a touch of parable in the style of “Prelude to a Kiss,” the Craig Lucas play in which a new bride swaps souls with an aimless old man for no particular reason except that the premise is a flexible one.

This handsome East West production, smartly staged by Chay Yew and acted by a charming cast, highlights a new, fluid comic voice, one that unself-consciously incorporates ethno-cultural information on its Thai, Chinese and white characters, with no discernible explanatory, “educational” strain. But Yew cannot disguise the bad news in “Big Hunk”: When things get serious, the play gets flaccid.

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But let’s start with the good news. Playing the understandably nervous birthday boy Winston, Eric Steinberg is entirely winning as a human land mine of neuroses. Though tall and handsome, he plays a jittery boy-man, a 29-year-old who still lives at home with his parents but knows enough to know he’s at the last-chance pit stop for competent adulthood.

Twitching but not pausing for breath, he introduces himself to us with, “Hi, my name is Winston. I have low self-esteem.” Steinberg does a little--just the right amount--of Woody Allen-esque fumbling with his glasses as he relates his own characteristically paranoid interpretation of some scientific data he’s read: “The human heart possesses more than enough power to destroy itself.”

And so Gomolvilas makes potent the play’s metaphor. Winston feels he will spontaneously combust if he doesn’t figure out his life. His sweet, meddling, Thai-immigrant parents (Dennis Dun and Jeanne Sakata) do everything they can to increase the pressure. They announce that a long line of Winston’s unmarried uncles have spontaneously combusted at age 30. And if Winston must marry in four days, why not a nice Thai girl? They import Noi (Kerri Higuchi), a pretty young woman who barely speaks English, and throw her at Winston, who hasn’t a clue what to do with her.

For sanity, Winston confides in his closest friends, a married couple, Sylvia (Kelly Coffield) and Nick (Steve Park). Nick, who is Chinese American, is always urging Winston to be more aggressive, to speak up for himself when people cut in front of him in line at the grocery checkout. Sylvia, who is white, is an old flame of Winston’s (though Winston doesn’t seem competent enough to have a relationship with anyone). Sylvia and Nick have their own problems. Their marriage is threatened by a general malaise, which is intensified when Sylvia finds a lump in her breast.

Yew keeps most of the cast onstage throughout the action, staring out at us as scenes are enacted elsewhere on the set. This works well and in unexpected ways. It’s interesting to watch Noi’s passive face, for instance, when, in another corner of the stage, Winston and his parents argue heatedly over whether or not he will marry her.

The characters sit and stand on the levels on Akeime Mitterlehner’s clean set--three planks in fiery shades of red, orange and yellow, and two sofas in similar shades. Behind them are rows and rows of industrial shelves, strewn with dozens of glass jars filled with an ashy substance, the remains of people who have spontaneously combusted--or just plain died. It’s a smart setting for a play in which a nervous sense of mortality hangs over most of the characters for most of the evening.

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Higuchi is excellent as the practically mute Noi. She makes it clear that Noi is no victim; she’s a self-possessed young woman who can look harmless while scheming with the best of them. Sakata is very funny as the ostensibly caring Mom, a woman who can smile and cry while outrageously lying to get what she wants. As the calm Nick, Park is an excellent foil to Steinberg’s nervousness. As Sylvia, Coffield manages to sparkle even though her character has the play’s worst and most unwieldy dialogue.

Yet when Gomolvilas gets serious, his youthfulness shows. Neither the malaise of Nick and Sylvia’s marriage nor the connection between Winston and Sylvia are written believably. In these important areas, the playwright substitutes platitudes for specific emotions with substantial underpinnings.

Which is not to say there isn’t reason to rejoice. “Big Hunk O’ Burning’ Love” announces the arrival of a playwright with a sure and steady comic style. If he has some growing to do, one senses he’s smart enough to feel the threat of mortality urging him on.

* “Big Hunk O’ Burnin’ Love,” East West Players, David Henry Hwang Theatre, Union Center for the Arts, Little Tokyo, 120 N. Judge John Aiso St., Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Aug. 2. $22-$27. (800) 233-3123. Running time: 2 hours.

Kelly Coffield: Sylvia

Dennis Dun: Dad

Kerri Higuchi: Noi

Steve Park: Nick

Jeanne Sakata: Mom

Eric Steinberg: Winston

An East West Players production. By Prince Gomolvilas . Directed by Chay Yew. Sets Akeime Mitterlehner. Lights Lisa Hashimoto. Costume Joyce Kim Lee. Sound Nathan Wang. Stage manager Victoria A. Gathe.

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