The Theatre @ Boston Court
May 13 - June 18, 2006
Previews and Reviews
LA Stage
May/June
Among the most exciting aspects of writing for a theatre magazine is the opportunity to meet rising young artists whose new voices will determine the future of the art. Among the clearest of these is that of Julia Cho, a gifted playwright who is garnering major awards at a very young age. The daughter of Korean immigrants and raised in Whittier, Cho combines traditional love of family with a bright and optimistic American sensibility. She is an alumnus on Amherst, Julliard and NYU's Tisch School of Dramatic Writing.
Cho exudes charm and happiness and is acutely articulate as she speaks of her life and work. Her new play Winchester House is [currently playing] at the Boston court in Pasadena. Though the title refers to the "Mystery House" in San Jose, where Sarah Winchester spent a lifetime adding rooms based on advice from a spiritualist, the playwright uses the house purely as a metaphor.
"Whether it's true or not, the Winchester legend is evocative," she explains. "this play is about a woman trying to figure her way through memories; how she got to her place in life. The heroine, a singer songwriter, is the epitome of a really lost 30-something woman. It is her story and she talks to the audience and guides them through. Winchester House represents the way we deal with past and with memory. That's how the title came about."
The play is directed by Chay Yew, who ran the Asian Theatre Workshop before the Taper suspended so many of the new playwright's forums. Yew has been a champion of Cho's work through her entire young career. "He's read all of my plays," she says. At the Taper he was an incredible resource for me because he commissioned scripts and brought me out for readings. He brought my first play 99 Histories out to LA for a reading and workshop while I was living in New York. He paired me with Jessica Kubzansky, who was and up and coming LA director." Kubzansky's success grew and now that she has become co-artistic director of the Boston court she has been able to solidify the artistic relationship with Cho through this production.
Cho has a fascinating take on the art of playwriting. "I find the plays are a barometer of where my thinking was several years ago. There is a lag time. Whatever play going on now is actually a reflection of how I felt when I actually started writing it. Time gives me clarity and perspective. My first plays were about what I knew so it made sense to write from a Korean American perspective. Those were the characters coming to me; the voices that were most alive in my head. There weren't a lot of Asian American stories out there so I was happy my contribution could be that."
FEATURE May 19, 2006
TheatreMania
All Over the Map
The Winchester House in Los Angeles
By: Dan Bacalzo and Adam Klasfeld
"We all tell stories," says playwright Julia Cho. "It's the way we make sense of our lives." In her new play The Winchester House, now on view at The Theatre @ Boston Court in Los Angeles, the central character Via, a singer/songwriter, looks back upon a defining moment in her life and tries to understand it in a new way. "The play tries to mimic the way memory worksÑhow it trespasses, revises, transforms, and erases," says Cho.
This world premiere production is directed by Chay Yew, whom Cho has known for several years and with whom she has collaborated on a number of projects. "What I appreciate most about him is that he is just as precise aurally as he is visually," says Cho. "Since he's a playwright himself [A Language of Their Own, Red, Porcelain], he really understands how important the rhythms and beats of a play are. He hears things the way I hear them, which is rare. And, because we've worked together so many times, we have a kind of shorthand by now. We're each very much attuned to how the other thinks."
Cho is a graduate of New York University's dramatic writing program; her prior work includes The Architecture of Loss and BFE. As is the case with those works, the central character of The Winchester House is Asian American. When asked how ethnicity affects the dynamics of the play, Cho responds, "The characters think and act out of who they are and where they're fromÑand that, of course, includes their ethnicity. But I would say that the play is not just about Asian Americans; it's about New Englanders and British Americans, too. The difference, of course, is that Asian Americans are considered "ethnic' whereas white Americans are not. The truth is, we all come from somewhere; we are all part of some kind of culture or tradition that could be deemed "ethnic.' "
While Cho is based in Los Angeles, a number of her plays have been produced in New York and other cities. "Like a lot of theater artists, I work wherever I'm invited," she says. "I do think theater in L.A. is a bit more marginal than it is in New York City, but there's just as much passion about it. With all the theaters in the L.A. region, and so many theater artists flying back and forth, Los Angeles and New York somehow feel very close to each other."
L.A. Weekly
THE WINCHESTER HOUSE
Julia Cho's play may not have much to do, even metaphorically, with the eponymous tourist spot in San Jose, but her story about a young woman investigating the moment at which she was seduced by a family friend has enough innate mystery at its heart to whet and keep our interest. Via (Kimiko Gelman) is an obscure singer who reenacts moments from an Asian-immigrant family life ruled by a distant physicist father (Nelson Mashita), gossipy mother (Dian Kobayashi) and seemingly unhelpful brother (Greg Watanabe). They are all spellbound by John and Helen Bergin (Arye Gross and Laura Wernette), a witty faculty couple whose summer home they constantly visit. Cho nicely thwarts audience expectations regarding Via's bitter search for truth and makes some telling observations about how unreliable (or hideously reliable) other people's memories can be. Still, the show screeches to a halt every time Via sings one of her folky "three and a half songs," and Via, who directly addresses the audience throughout the 90-minute play, schizophrenically switches from a spare poetry to an annoyingly literal narrative to describe the people in her life. Director Chay Yew sensitively orchestrates the action across scenic designer Susan Gratch's spare apron, whose upstage border is formed by the dense clutter of stored furniture and forgotten paintings, while Jose Lopez's soft lighting plot accents the characters' vulnerabilities. Theater @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; thru June 18. (626) 683-6883. (Steven Mikulan)
Making connections
"Winchester House' opens onto a wall at Boston Court
Pasadena Weekly
By Leigh Kennicott
The Theatre @ Boston Court has given newcomer Julia Cho an ideal production for her new play, "Winchester House." The recipient of numerous awards, Cho has written a memory play about a tortured young woman obsessed by a single misstep as a teen. The bare stage allows for cabaret, scenes and narrative by Via (Kimiko Gelman), who lets us know right away that her life was ruined. Just how so is ours to find out.
Although she dominates the stage, the narrative conjures a host of characters from Via's past. Her traditional mother (Dian Kobayashi) plays a role in assigning guilt, while her father (Nelson Mashita) is remembered as towering but distant. Her only confidant is her brother, the fiercely protective Ernest (Greg Watanabe). All figure in a strange relationship with neighbors John and Helen Bergin (Arye Gross and Laura Wernette).
When we finally learn the connection between the play's title and the performance piece before us, we have meandered too far into Via's personal maze of locked rooms to find our way out.
The mysteries pile up like the furniture towering in the background until Via is given the opportunity to test her memory against that of her counterpart, John Bergin. Purportedly a clash between perceived truths, the present encounter with Bergin causes Cho's sometimes lyrical writing to falter. Chay Yew, an internationally acclaimed director, has allowed his leading actress to suffer without redemption through the show's hour-and-a half and seems not to have provided Gross, an accomplished actor, with any feedback at all. The result reinforces a disconnectedness between Via and the others that makes the piece seem merely a one-woman show with people.
Nevertheless, the theatre has assembled some of the best technicians working today. Even before the action begins, we are conscious of John Zalewski's stunning collages of sound. Lighting by JosŽ L—pez shapes the piece in squared chunks of light. The background by Susan Gratch resembles an attic with its jumble of old furniture and found treasures, hiding a host of more realistic stage furniture that rumbles onto the bare stage for each of Via's memories.
The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena, presents "The Winchester House," at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday through June 18. Tickets are $30 and are available online at www.bostoncourt.org <http://www.bostoncourt.org/> or at the box office. Call (626) 683-6883.
Variety
Tuesday May 16
The Theater@Boston Court's latest show, Julia Cho's "The Winchester House," is an unfortunate case of an underdone work receiving a full production too early. The kernel of a play is there, and it works in fits and starts, but it almost never achieves the emotional gravitas sought. It's all tell and little show, as if Cho didn't trust her story and characters enough to simply let the situation speak for itself. Add some bad songs to the mix and listless direction by Chay Yew and you have 90 minutes of theater that feels far longer.
Structuring the show is the exploration of Via (Kimiko Gelman) into her past so as to understand the present. During her childhood, her mother (Dian Kobayashi) treated her more as a gossipy confidante than a daughter, and her well meaning if distracted father (Nelson Mashita) was off in his own world.
For Via and her brother Ernest (Greg Watanabe), the main interest in their lives was their relationship with the adult Bergin family, John (Arye Gross) and Helen (Laura Wernette). Something happened between Via and John that severed the friendship between the families, and when a dying John contacts Via in the present day, the events of the past threaten to overwhelm her life.
Gelman, who is onstage for the entire play, valiantly carries the production on her shouldersÑan impressive but largely
thankless task. She's comfortable talking to the audience, but there's way too much of that and not enough of the characters talking to each other. Gelman is obviously a talented actor, exceptionally good in a scene in which she finally confronts John, her eyes darting back and forth like a trapped animal as she tries not to cry.
Gross makes an interesting and reasonable villain, rationalizing his actions under the guise of love, and the scenes between Via and John work so well that it's unfortunate the play doesn't focus more on this relationship.
Watanabe is amusing as the exasperated Ernest, but the other actors are in the show so little that they barely register.
Susan Gratch's arrestingly cluttered set, a sort of mental attic filled with chairs and dresses and stools and such, makes a nicely symbolic backdrop for the action, and is used efficiently when the actors retrieve the set pieces for each scene from the tangle.
Jose Lopez's lighting works particularly well in a scene where Via describes the titular house, and block after block of light, representing room after room, fills the stage.
Sets, Susan Gratch; costumes, Dori Quan; lighting, Jose Lopez; sound, John Zalewski; production stage manager, Erica R. Christensen. Opened, reviewed May 13, 2006. Runs through June 18. Running time: 1 HOUR, 25 MIN.
The Winchester House
Backstage West
May 18, 2006
By Jennie Webb
It starts with an unfinished song. And that's kind of a promissory note to audiences who expect a neat and tidy tying-up of plot and laying-out of details by the time the last verse is in place. Julia Cho's play about small decisions and exclusive memories does indeed promise in its initial moments to revisit and reclaim what its narrator, Via (Kimiko Gelman), has been missing. But to its credit, the gentle, curious new work doesn't take a straightforward path, nor does it end up precisely where we may expect-or want-it to.
In a way, there are no big surprises in The Winchester House. Via is a lost 30-something who sings in coffee houses and scrapes by but never refuses a swanky dinner or check from her older, khaki-clad brother, Ernest (Greg Watanabe), always "the voice of reason." Their parents are long dead, and at one particular dinner, Ernest tells Via that he's heard from an old family friend, Mr. Bergin (Arye Gross). And that he's been re-evaluating the, er, event which led them to distance themselves from Mr. Bergin as teenagers. And that maybe it would be reasonable for her to get in touch with him. It's her call.
Chay Yew's assured directorial hand guides a group of terrific performers through this meandering journey full of secrets, where nothing's black-and-white. Gelman is a softly charming presence, fascinating even in the play's most predictable moments. Likewise, Watanabe is understated yet effective. Dian Kobayashi and Nelson Mashita play their parents, a professor of physics and his faculty wife; they make crystal clear the loneliness and isolation felt by Asian immigrants. And with the dashing Bergin and his sophisticated wife, Helen (Laura Wernette), the play captures what it's like for children to long for and fall in love with what they don't have: a house full of wonderful things and people entirely unlike their own parents. The lovely Wernette and Gross are right on the money as they subtly shift gears in their pivotal roles.
Director Yew knows the material well, and has put together a beautiful, cohesive package. Susan Gratch's set of whitewashed shades of gray serves as a perfect backdrop, allowing the lighting by Jose Lopez to play an appropriately strong role. John Zalewski's almost subliminal sound design is magical. Granted, The Winchester House contains too many bits and pieces that seem out of place-including entirely forgettable songs-and there's not much "wow" factor here. But even without a strong emotional punch the play does manage to sneak in, raising some pretty interesting questions after its quiet investigation.
Presented by and at the Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Thu.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. May 13-Jun. 18. (626) 683-6883. www.bostoncourt.org.
Los Angeles Times
THEATER REVIEW
"The Winchester House'
A truth beyond memory at The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena.
By F. Kathleen Foley
Special to The Times
May 19, 2006
Deceptively modest in scale, Julia Cho's "The Winchester House," now receiving its world premiere at the Theatre @ Boston Court, is actually a surprisingly dense, "Rashomon"-like drama about a young woman's increasingly uncertain remembrance of a molestation. Both a poignant memory play and a trenchant indictment of the essential unreliability of memory, "Winchester" toys with easy assumptions about morality - and reality.
Via (Kimiko Gelman), a sometime lounge singer adrift in her own unrealized potential, narrates the piece, contributing an occasional song along the way Ñ thematically belabored musical numbers that seem oddly out of context in this otherwise delicate framework.
In spite of that, Via is a compelling protagonist whose life has been seriously blighted by her adolescent encounter with her adult neighbor, John Bergin (Arye Gross) - an event that we immediately assume to be sexual, although Cho is exasperatingly coy about coming to that particular point.
After her brother Ernest (effectively underplayed by Greg Watanabe) tells Via that Bergin is terminally ill, Via decides to meet once more with her despised antagonist. But Bergin's vastly different account of the "incident in the barn" causes Via to reevaluate her own painful recollections.
The excellent cast includes Dian Kobayashi as Via's chatty yet lonely mother, Nelson Mashita as her emotionally repressed father, and Laura Wernette as Bergin's wife, whom Via remembers as an elegant role model but who was actually a hopeless alcoholic Ñ another example of Via's youthful misperceptions.
Abetted by superlative production elements, most notably Jose Lopez's dreamlike lighting, John Zalewski's haunting sound, and Susan Gratch's cleverly utilitarian set, director Chay Yew gracefully balances the play's opposing realities.
Also perfect is Gross, who colors the compassionate, attractively cerebral Bergin with a creepiness so faint, we can't tell if it's really there. For Bergin, Via was his greatest love. For Via, Bergin was a violator. Cho wisely leaves it for us to decide just whose perceptions come closest to the truth.
"The Winchester House," The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 18. $30. (626) 683-6883. www.bostoncourt.org. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.
"WINCHESTER HOUSE" SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT AND MORE
Pasadena Star
The Winchester House, the Theatre @ Boston court, 70 N. Mentor Avenue, Pasadena
8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, 3 p.m. Sunday, Through June 18, $30, (626) 683-6883
Memoir often proves trickier than one expects, simply because it relies on memory. Two people often remember the same incident so differently the two versions bear little relationship to each other. What if the moment in question provides the great turning point in one person's life? This becomes the central theme of Julia Cho's "The Winchester House," now premiering at The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena.
The title references the famous house in San Jose, built by the gun fortune heiress whose pathological need to expand led to such a rabbit warren that nobody knows quite how many rooms there actually are. In Cho's vocabulary, and that of her central character, Via, the house is a symbol for the complexity of the mind. One remembers some, but not all of one's past. Via's brother has one version. The family friend who proved the catalyst to Via's adult persona provides a totally different window. Via grounds herself completely in a dark and difficult past now remembered, it appears, only by her. That does not mean it's false, only isolated.
Kimiko Gelman becomes Via, a coffee house singer in her 30s whose soul still resonates with a formative incident in her teens, when the nurture of a family friend she saw as a surrogate parent went awry.
Now that man has sent a message through her successful brother. He is dying and wants to see her, she assumes, to apologize. All the old stories rise again: her issues with her own parents, her need for her alternative ones, her sense of anger and betrayal. Worse, her brother can't quite remember why they are supposed to be angry.
Gelman's intensity and sense of careful control keep the story very real. Control is what people who see such an incident as their defining moment relish. The one difficulty comes from the script's demand that Via break into song - obviously the songs through which the character vents her anger in those coffee houses. Musical director Scott Rodarte provides the guitar accompaniment, but her voice is often too soft to be heard clearly, and the lyrics are important.
As the man she must confront, Arye Gross has the force and demeanor of earnest innocence. His sincerity flies in the face of stereotype and creates the meaningful confusion of the play. But then, the entire cast proves remarkable. Laura Wernette becomes admirable, the fragile as the man's motherly wife. Dian Kobayashi vibrates with self-centered energy as Via's mother. Nelson Mashita emanates a kind of scholarly calm as her emotionally absent father. Greg Watanabe's supportive brother when young, and practical but distant brother when older manage the neat trick of age separation without makeup.
Director Chay Yew orchestrates the piece on a nearly bare stage surrounded by Susan Gratch's ash-gray attic of effluvia Ð the stuff of rooms and rooms of memories. It's a wonderful device, which lets the play charge along without breaks of distractions of a more literal set. Indeed, the play only lasts about an hour and a half and is performed without intermission, though enough happened in that time to leave the pondering material of a much longer piece.
Small details do grate, though, as they disrupt the obvious symbolic intent, such as the constant discussion of Via's brother as a man in a button-down shirt, in a world of button-down shirtsÉyet his only adult appearance being not in a button-down shirt. Fortunately, such things are easy fixes.
"The Winchester House" leaves one, if not with total understanding about the two-sided nature of such life-shifting moments, at least an expanded perspective on the ability of the memory to shade elements of the past to emphasize what seemed most important to us at the time. One will certainly have much to discuss over coffee afterward. Plan it for your evening.
Random Lengths News
May 26, 2006
By Gene Warech, Theatre Reviewer
Winchester House at Boston Court
Julia Cho's subtle, gently provoking play follows a casually iconoclastic young woman, low-keyed Kimiko Gelman, who draws you into her web. At first she seems so sure of herself. As a pivotal incident in her past is exposed, she is true enough to herself to drift into uncertainty, confusion and revelation.
Arye Gross is an older family friend, who she has demonized after an early sexual encounter. Laura Wernette is his wife who the younger woman idolized, but apparently didn't see clearly. Her odd-couple parents are a science-absorbed father (Nelson Mashita) and needy, gossipy mother (chatty Dian Kobayishi). Her younger brother (blunt Greg Watanabe) nudges her into a position where enlightenment is possible.
The physical production, especially Jose Lopez' shifting lights and John Zalewski's supportive sound, impeccably maintain the mood. The delicate threads had to have been gently, patiently woven by director Chay Yew.
Through June 18 at 70 N. Mentor in Pasadena. For tickets and info, call (626) 683-6883,