It’s rare to see a play that
offers a good deal of promise and then dashes it before your eyes, but such is Outside
People by Zayd Dohrn at the Vineyard. Alert here: The only way I can
review this one is to spoil it big time. So if you have issues about knowing
how the story resolves, read this review no further.
Similar
to David Henry Hwang’s current Broadway
comedy Ching’•lish in a certain sense, it tells the “stranger in
a strange land” tale of an American who has come to China to reinvent his life
a little. In this case, recent college grad Malcolm (Matt Dellapina) who has arrived on the promise of a nebulously
defined job offer from his Chinese-native former classmate David (Nelson
Lee). On his first jet-lagged evening in
the country, the nebbishy Malcolm is set up with Xiao Mei (Li Jun Li); he has a little too much to drink but not so much
that she doesn’t like him anyway. They wind up having an affair, which will
include Xiao Mei teaching Malcolm Mandarin.
Their
budding romance provides the springboard for often amusing comedy-of-manner
sequences, exploring differences in cultural perception and context…especially
as the relationship becomes more serious and Malcolm must confront a divide
that may be wider than he bargained for.
While
the particulars of the play—the details of the cross-cultural
hurdles—are intriguing, as well as the mercenary character of David, what
starts to give one a sinking feeling is an overriding sense of familiarity
about the general story arc. Which isn’t helped by Malcolm being such a nebbish
at heart that it’s telegraphed. He’s going to fall more and more in love with
Xiao Mei, declare himself in a way that makes her declare her feelings too, and
propose that she come back to America with him. But David will bring to bear the
peer pressure of the insider, with all the reasons why (in his view) this is A
Really Bad Idea. And of course…Malcolm will cave in to this pressure, lose the
courage of his convictions and run out on her, just as she arrives at his hotel
room packed and ready to go.
This
depressingly familiar territory, hewing to a template long in the Zeitgeist,
about men who can’t man up when their romantic convictions are tested. Perhaps
most recently, Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig told
the same story as Outside People, only
the girl was heavy instead of Chinese.
I
can’t say that the Outside People’s
playwright, Mr. Dohrn, isn’t making a his rightful artist’s choice in opting
for his washout ending, but it’s highly unsatisfying (there is a deadness in the audience as the lights
blackout on the final scene of the woman abandoned, and applause starts with
labored effort after the curtain call begins) and it makes you wonder what the
hell you were there for. To learn what you already knew in the first five
minutes about the “hero”’s weak willed personality? To be told that, in the
end, cultural differences will always divide us? I’m on the verge of typing
that the compensatory aspects of the play mentioned above aren’t really that
much compensation…but it’s worse than that, really. Because with an affirming
ending, with the notion that a Malcolm can find his stones (because Malcolms
sometimes do find their stones,
it’s called growing up), the play would have a success that’s anywhere from
modest to through-the-roof. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for dark endings when
they’re earned, cathartic and right; when they’re the inevitable (yet fresh) culmination of story threads
that lead you to the dark places;
but when they’re unbalanced, abrupt and
unnecessary…well, that just comes off as smug fatalism.
And
we all deserve better than that. The playwright included. Don’t we?
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