Little Saigon’s TV With Teeth

Biting satire isn’t the typical Saturday morning humor viewers would expect with their bowl of Wheaties. But that’s what they’ll see when the slapstick comedy “The Rosie Nguyen Show” airs Saturday morning on Little Saigon TV.

Unabashedly controversial, the mock talk show is the latest production by the young Vietnamese American theater troupe Club O’ Noodles.

The group returns to Orange County for a “comeback” performance after a four-year hiatus. Packing a few more years of maturity and experience under its belt, Club O’ Noodles tackles the emotionally charged Little Saigon protests--sparked by a video store owner’s display of an image of Ho Chi Minh--as part of its new material.

“We felt we needed to come back to the community now that it’s reached its 25-year mark and it’s more mature and we’re more mature,” said co-founder Tram Le, who plays the show’s host, Rosie.

With humor that may rub salt in the wounds or tickle the funny bones of thousands of anti-Communist protesters who stormed the streets of Little Saigon last year, Club O’ Noodles reflects on the two-month incident that ignited in January 1999.

In the Rosie Show, cast members portray the media and angry protesters who shift agendas once platters of “yummy goi cuon” (Vietnamese spring rolls) appear. Reporters stop mid-interview, protesters stop rallying and Rosie interrupts her show to make eating their top priority.

Performed entirely in English, the prerecorded show directed by Ham Tran pulls from American pop culture with common one- liners such as “You can’t handle the truth” and a “Where’s Waldo?” bit. The skit was written by Le, Tran and Phi Long Mai.

The show takes its name from the ubiquitous Vietnamese surname “Nguyen” and is a twist on the popular Rosie O’Donnell talk show. The group got the idea for the program after seeing an interview with Truong Van Tran on Roseanne’s now-canceled talk show.

The show itself draws “protesters” including a Vietnam vet dressed in full army fatigues (played by Minh Nguyen) outside the TV station’s doors. Rosie, who is Vietnamese, doesn’t speak the language and stumbles over the name of her special guest, Truong Van Tran (the video store owner, played by Hiep Jayvee Mai).

“It’s a challenge to portray a real, living person like Truong Van Tran,” said Mai, 30, who joined Club O’ Noodles in 1993 and goes by the stage name Jayvee Mai The Hiep. “Most of the characters I’ve played are fictitious.”

Determined to be convincing, Mai studied endless videotaped interviews of Truong Van Tran, carefully watching his speech patterns and gestures.

“I know [Truong Van Tran] is a very sensitive issue in the community, and I’m a bit nervous about the role,” Mai said. “But I know I just can’t make him out to be a hero or a bad guy, because he’s really just a normal person.”

Club O’ Noodles has touched plenty of nerves with its past performances. The group of actors from Orange County and Los Angeles surfaced in 1994 with a debut spot on Little Saigon TV’s New Year’s special. They mimicked celebrities and politicians such as local Councilman Tony Lam and pop singer Linda Trang Dai.

Other performances included the 1995 “Miss Little Saigon,” a play about beauty pageants that touched on woman’s issues. One of the contestants’ best talent was to insult others. Club O’ Noodles also presented the 1996 “Laughter From the Children of War,” which toured San Jose and college campuses in Massachusetts and Vermont.

Shortly after, the troupe receded from the spotlight to venture into different projects.

Founded in 1993 by Cal State Northridge students Le and Hung Nguyen, Club O’ Noodles modeled its comedy after NBC’s popular “Saturday Night Live” skits. The nonprofit group is composed of eight 20- and 30-somethings who can act, dance, sing, play music, write original scripts and direct. The group is based in Senshin Buddhist Temple in central Los Angeles, where they rehearse.

One of the group’s goals is to be a sounding board for the Vietnamese community. The other is to dispel as many cultural taboos and misconceptions as possible.

“We’re letting cultural secrets out of the closet,” said Le, who prefers to openly discuss topics such as gender roles, divorce, sex, culture clashes and growing up bicultural. “We want to be the voice of the young generation of Vietnamese Americans. It’s a bit of a rebellion on our part, because we didn’t all want to be doctors and lawyers.”

The troupe doesn’t mind raunchy acts or cursing when they’re performing live on stage, but they respectfully keep the language and visuals “PG on TV.”

Club O’ Noodles is seeking sponsors to help launch its upcoming “Stories From a Nail Salon,” a new stage production and a monthly television comedy show geared for local cable stations.

Little Saigon Television President Thai Xuan Dinh supports the theater group’s work.

“They were mostly students just out of school when they approached me in 1994,” Dinh said. “We’re always looking for new talent to present, and Club O’ Noodles offered a new perspective for the community. They really made a name for themselves.”

When asked about the controversial material on the “Rosie Show,” Dinh laughed.

“This community is always looking for a controversy,” Dinh said, adding that generational and culture clashes might ultimately benefit the Vietnamese community.

“Club O’ Noodles offers the good and bad of the community, and we can educate ourselves from it,” Dinh said. “In the ‘Rosie Show,’ it shows that people who participated in the protest did bad things too. The Vietnamese don’t like to see shows that are critical of themselves. But they need to understand democracy in the United States. They have to respect the different opinions of others.”

SHOW TIMES

Club O’ Noodles presents “The Rosie Nguyen Show,” 8 a.m. Saturday on Little Saigon Television, Channel 62. The show will be rebroadcasted at 11:30 p.m. Jan. 24 as a special presentation for the Vietnamese New Year.