Inconclusive Talk About ‘sex & sex’

As you might expect from a play that takes its title from a Rolling Stones song, Philip W. Chung’s “laughter joy & loneliness & sex & sex & sex & sex” at Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Theatre 4 includes sex and drugs. But despite the oldies blaring in the background, this Lodestone Theatre Ensemble production doesn’t rock.

A streetwise Cupid (Ogie Zulueta), clad in red warm-up pants and a red bandanna, and his elegantly white-gowned wife, Psyche (Yuria Kim), wager that love cannot exist without the soul. A Korean American graduate student, Tiger (Ryun Yu), is their test case.

The play opens with Tiger grunting, locked in the sexual embrace of one of his students (Julie Neumark). He’s 30; she’s almost 19. They both have a penchant for quoting lines from “Annie Hall.” He hides this ethically questionable affair from his friends.

It’s hard not to think about Soon-Yi Previn and “Mighty Aphrodite.” Chung disingenuously ignores this baggage.

Tiger is secretly in love with his whiny friend Sunny (Bokyun Chun), who’s living with an unseen white guy and is about to move to the West Coast. Tiger’s neighbor is a brash braggart (Kipp Shiotani) who extols the wonders of Asian American women, ever ready for a one-night stand.

The passive and uncompelling Tiger leaves this play empty at its center, and even with the grace of godly intervention, the ending isn’t particularly believable. Moreover, director Eric Byler doesn’t balance the scene-stealing tendencies of Shiotani’s macho exuberance or Neumark’s confident cuteness.

According to the program notes, Chung wanted to write about sex because Asian Americans don’t talk about it. But without the tastefully simulated acts of sex, the talk here isn’t coherent enough to hold this play together.

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* “laughter joy & loneliness & sex & sex & sex & sex,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 4, 514 S. Spring St. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 30. $13. (213) 485-1681. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes.