Keone Young’s Performance Is Strength of ‘Leilani’s Hibiscus’

It takes a strong, centered performer to draw an audience into a character’s psyche without doing much of anything.

For an illustration thereof, try the opening moments of “Leilani’s Hibiscus,” a wobbly but often affecting memory play by Jon Shirota, opening the new East West Players season. An Okinawan man played by Keone Young kneels before the gravestones of his brother and sister-in-law. Accompanying himself on the samisen, he sings a slow, evocative Okinawan melody.

Young’s a familiar, jowly face from television and movie appearances as well as a fixture at East West Players. But he has more than familiarity going for him. Playing a lonely man disappointed in love, he suggests layers and hidden corners of feeling with a minimum of fuss: a moment of reflective silence, a bar or two of song. Even as “Leilani’s Hibiscus” gets tripped up by thickets of exposition, especially in Act 1, Young clears the path for us.

Playwright Shirota intermingles the earth and spirit worlds. Straight off, unbeknownst to Yasu (Young), the ghosts of his dead relatives (irascible codgers as portrayed by Michael Hagiwara and Dian Kobayashi) rise up and wander the stage. They’re curious about why Yasu has returned to Maui, his former residence. The answer comes soon enough. Yasu informs the headstones he plans to build a new family tomb on Okinawa and relocate their ashes to their rightful place.

Maui, their adopted residence, isn’t really home. Or is it?

Yasu has more than ashes on his mind when he returns, after many years. (The present-day scenes are laid in 1960; the flashbacks take the characters back to the beginning of World War II.) Yasu hopes to reunite with an old lover, Leilani (Melody Butiu), a native Hawaiian. “You used to think she was just another stupid, dark-skinned and ill-mannered kanaka girl,” Yasu says, speaking to his brother’s gravestone. In flashback the play reveals the obstacles inherent in the interracial wartime romance, cut short by the war itself.

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“Leilani’s Hibiscus” takes its cue from its title. It’s a fragrant, somewhat hazy piece, with much talk of home and heartache and pluralistic cultural identity--what it means to be Okinawan, but also Hawaiian; what it means to Yasu to have been a Japanese prisoner of war, while his nephew (Shaun Shimoda) fought on the American side.

When the adult Leilani, now married, meets up with Yasu, she brings along their college-bound daughter, Emma (Lilia Dominguez). Yasu has never met her; Emma learns of her birth father’s identity just prior to a highly charged introduction.

That’s a lot of incident, in two time zones, past and present. Playwright Shirota has trouble explaining everything and everybody in an easy-breathing way. And yet, in director Tim Dang’s production, the big encounters land their emotional punches. Young and Butiu finesse some awkward patches and manage to suggest a full, if cruelly detoured, relationship. The scene in which Leilani informs her daughter about Yasu is facile, compressed melodrama, yet the performers give it what it needs.

At its most promising Shirota’s writing, here and in earlier works such as “Lucky Come Hawaii,” is steeped in island culture contradictions. That’s good.

It’s also expositionally clunky, in ways that tend to cloud up our perception and enjoyment of things.

Director Dang gives the play a solid, musical staging, though he’s not one to go for the offhand moment, the indirect emotional effect. In tune with the ceremonial songs and dances interpolated into the story, the production is more ceremonial than dramatic.

In an erratic play, however, Keone Young exerts a graceful, steadying influence.

* “Leilani’s Hibiscus,” East West Players, David Henry Hwang Theater at the Union Center for the Arts, 120 N. Judge John Aiso St., Little Tokyo, downtown. Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. No 2 p.m. show Oct. 9. Ends Oct. 17. $25-$30. (800) 233-3123. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Keone Young: Yasu

Melody Butiu: Leilani

Cathleen Chin: Kimiko

Lilia Dominguez: Emma

Michael Hagiwara: Kama

Dian Kobayashi: Tsuyu

Shaun Shimoda: Ichiro

Written by Jon Shirota. Directed by Tim Dang. Set by Akeime Mitterlehner. Costumes by Ken Takemoto. Lighting by Rae Creevey. Okinawan choreography by Aiko (Tengan) Majikina. Hawaiian hula movement by Casey Kono. Sound by Robert Shinso. Music consultant Keone Young. Stage manager Ricardo Figueroa.