Tony Solis isn't well known as a stage actor, but he gives a Po'okela Award-worthy comic performance as fish dealer Alvin Kawabata in Kumu Kahua's revival of playwright Edward Sakamoto's "Aloha Las Vegas." Solis doesn't look close to the 50-year age of his character, and it's a stretch to imagine him as Japanese, but it doesn't matter. Solis is consistently excellent in capturing every essential facet of the character. Casting gambles pay off
across the boards
"Aloha Las Vegas," presented 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday, through Sept. 29 at Kumu Kahua Theatre. Tickets are $16 ($13 on Thursday). Call 536-4441.
Review by John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.comSolis has a great co-star and comic partner in Janice Terukina, who, thanks to Nara M.M. Springer Cardenes' dowdy costumes, submerges herself in the character of Jane Fukuda, a shy, never-married 41-year-old schoolteacher. Terukina has a more complicated character to work with. She, too, does Po'okela-worthy work.
And then there's Dann Seki as Wally Fukuda, recently widowed family patriarch. Seki can always be counted on for first-rate work in complex roles.
Wally Fukuda's primary pastime is assembling jigsaw puzzles. His primary companion is Gracie (Jennifer Vo), a compassionate neighbor who helps out with the housework.
Wally is drifting through life -- mourning his wife, and increasingly concerned that June is 41 and still unmarried. And then his old friend Harry (Allan Y. Okubo) turns up. Harry, divorced and happily settled in Las Vegas, is back in Honolulu with glowing tales of how wonderful life is for local folks in the Promised Land.
Harry makes his pitch -- come live Las Vegas, Wally -- in the first scene. There's lots of talk about the wonderful times to be had, and much of the early comic action comes as Harry and Wally introduce Gracie to the complexities of big-time craps. The long sketch builds beautifully. Gracie eventually throws her way to an imaginary $64,000 fortune. Wally decides to move to Vegas and thinks his children should come with him. The kids respond in different ways.
June is absolutely against it. She thinks it's a bad idea all the way around and wants her father to stay in Hawaii.
Her brother, Butch (Eric H. Mita), a security guard, decides that Vegas is the place to be, despite the reservations of his wife, Deedee (Michelle A. Kim).
And so, from the time Harry enters the picture, "Aloha Las Vegas" presents an articulate and consistently entertaining examination of the impact of "Vegas" on local culture and the psyches of Hawaii residents. It also examines the steady erosion of the cultural milieu that Wally, his family and friends grew up with in Hawaii -- affordable housing, the simple pleasure of watching baseball at Honolulu Stadium and the days when Aala was a vibrant neighborhood rather than high-rises and street people.
Ten years after it premiered at Kumu Kahua, "Aloha Las Vegas" can be appreciated as one of Edward Sakamoto's best plays -- well written, entertaining and timeless. The economic issues are -- unfortunately -- as timely and tragic as ever. The characters represent the experiences and perspectives of anyone who has lived in Hawaii long enough to remember how "it used to be."
Sakamoto adds plenty of local trivia. Many of the details he adds to the individual characters transcend both ethnicity and regional perspectives. For instance, Wally feels responsible for his wife's death because he smoked and she died of lung cancer; since her death he's been sleeping on the couch because he can't handle sleeping alone in their bed.
June never found a man who could live up to her expectations -- or match up to her memories of her father. Butch divorced his first wife because she couldn't get pregnant, apparently unaware that he is the one with the fertility problem -- or, as Deedee puts it, "He doesn't have enough tadpoles in his juice!"
Butch also is apparently unaware that he has a weakness for gambling.
Director Harry Wong III has done some gambling of his own with the casting. Not only does Solis look considerably younger than 50 (Seki played Alvin Kawabata in the 1992 production), but Mita doesn't look 13 years older than Kim, and Vo appears considerably younger than the character of Gracie.
But Wong's bets pay off all across the board. The actors quickly become the characters regardless of any differences in age, and "Aloha Las Vegas" is even better the second time around.
Seki is a such a natural, he hardly seems to be acting and is perfect in the starring role. Okubo, playing slightly against type, displays comparable skill in a key scene that brings out another side of the brash Vegas big-timer. Vo, who was one of the brightest discoveries in Tony Pisculli's recent staging of "Two Gentlemen of Verona," plays a local girl with a vengeance and does a great job in the craps sketch, and Kim makes a welcome return to the local stage with her neatly nuanced portrayal of Deedee Fukuda. Mita has the smallest and shallowest role but plays it well, too.
Solis quickly became an audience favorite on opening night, and with good reason, but Terukina's success in making June Fukuda more than a comic spinster adds an essential element to the overall success of "Aloha Las Vegas."
Wong's excellent sense of character development and dramatic pacing, and the unobtrusive contribution by tech crew members BullDog (set design), Gerald Kawaoka (lighting) and Keith K. Kashiwada (sound) add the other components that make Kumu Kahua's "Aloha Las Vegas" a best bet in local theater.
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