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On the Scene
John Berger
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ON THE SCENE: AGE, SEX, LOCATION AND HIFF
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THREE GENERATIONS: Stu Hirayama, left, Marcus R. Oshiro, and Ryan I. Sueoka celebrated Thursday at the opening night party for "Age Sex Location" at Kumu Kahua. Sueoka gives a powerful performance as Kazuo Fujioka, a mute wheelchair-bound 442nd RCT veteran who is the patriarch of a dysfunctional Japanese-American family. Oshiro plays his son, a disgraced Democratic Party politician, and Hirayama is grandson Clyde, a public school teacher who would rather write pidgin fiction for local literature journals. At its best, "Age Sex Location" is an engaging look at what can happen when naive individuals plunge into the fantasy world of the Internet, but playwright Dennis Carroll adds a familiar story of intergenerational conflict within a Japanese-American family. "Age Sex Location" would be more "now" without the backstory, and the running time of one hour and 40 minutes is too long for this one-act play.
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Stars of the show: Jaedee-Kae Vergara and Ron Encarnacion relaxed at the party after sharing the most violent and disturbing scenes in the play. Vergara does an outstanding job in the role of Bobbie Fujioka, an intelligent but lonely 14-year-old girl who seeks friendship on the Internet. Encarnacion is excellent as Gerard, a creepy online predator whose failure to treat Bobbie as a real-life girlfriend instead of a pornographic fantasy has fatal consequences.
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Hearing the call: Zena Diaz greeted Cesar Montano Friday after catching his film, "Panaghoy Sa Suba (Call of the River)," at the Hawaii International Film Festival. The characters in the film speak Cebuano rather than Tagalog, but Diaz said she could understand most of it.
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Meet the good guy: Director Taurie Kinoshita talked with cast members James Cunningham, left, and M.J. Gonzalvo while other partiers made a second trip through the buffet line. Gonzalvo plays one of the few genuinely nice characters, a good-hearted computer-savvy guy who befriends Bobbie Fujioka and her older sister, but doesn't try to exploit either of them. Director Kinoshita makes good use of a four-person "Compu-chorus" to represent the Internet and the perils it contains. "Age Sex Location" continues through Nov. 27. Call 536-4441.
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