Unusual theater
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An anxious father reassures his young son that even though Mommy isn't living with them, "she loves you," even if it's "from farther away ... from the dump ... in a Hefty bag."
Welcome to the dark, unpredictable and sometimes oddly comic world of "Dare Devil Blues," a collection of 10 monologues written by Eric Yokomori brought to the local stage as a Kumu Kahua Dark Night production by the Two Chicks, One Pake and One Popolo Theatre Collective.
Jason Kanda delivers fascinating performances in bringing Yokomori's twisted characters to life. Danel Verdugo, one of the two "chicks" who founded the collective in 2002, announces the breaks between each sketch, adds occasional sound effects, and leads the audience through a series of relaxation exercises during intermission.
Kanda keeps the energy level up as he creates an assortment of over-the-edge characters. Few if any are folks you'd want to meet on the street, let alone invite into your home, but Kanda makes each encounter must-watch theater. "Sick" is a matter of definition, and some of these people are "sicker" or grosser than others, but none of their stories is predictable.
There's the prison inmate who ricochets between sweet talk and profanity as he tries to get his girlfriend to promise she'll wait 20 years for him. A conflicted man explains to his father's corpse that he's sorry to be late for the funeral but a country song about a duck who saves a roomful of teenage girls from a drive-by shooting and was hit by a bullet and "flew south to Jesus," left him "all cried out." A magic act veers off on a tangent when he discovers his prize rabbit has died. And, there's a powerful comic encounter involving a sexually aroused man who tells the object of his desire that his desire for sex is about ensuring the survival of the human race.
Some sketches are relatively shallow. Others address deeper aspects of human relationships without preaching or becoming heavy handed.
Kanda creates these people with astute use of vocal inflection and dialects enhanced by posture and body language. And so we "see" the little boy in the one sketch, and visualize the "games" involved when a man indulges a woman's desire for role playing in another. A large plastic spoon represents a cell phone in one sketch and a knife in another. A wooden stool, a chair, and a few other everyday items, are almost all the props Kanda needs to make "Dare Devil Blues" a great evening of unconventional theatrical entertainment.
Verdugo adds the final piece to the show as the off-stage singer of "The Duck Song."
About the theater group
The Two Chicks, One Pake and One Popolo Theatre Collective was founded in 2002 by "chicks" Dorothy Stamp and Danel Verdugo, "pake" Alvin Chan and "popolo" Moses Goods III, for staging what Verdugo describes as "less-done theater, but not extremely experimental things," and as a way of raising money so Chan and Goods could go to New York.
The group debuted with David Mamet's "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" as a dark night production at Kumu Kahua, but conflicting schedules and other theater commitments prevented them from doing another show until now.
Goods was able to take his talent to the mainland earlier this year. The group is now open to others with similar interests.
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