Usually the Lovely Bride and I have tickets early in a show's run, but this time we didn't. We returned from one of the Lovely B's Tax seminars in Bellingham for our first chosen Sunday afternoon, and were completely wiped out, so we swapped our tickets in for a later date two weeks later, which proved fortuitous because the LB pulled a muscle and was on crutches for the next week (she's recovered nicely, thanks for asking). But its late in the run when we got to Rep for this one.
And it's a split decision. The Lovely Bride loved it. I was more neutral on it. I didn't hate it, but didn't connect as much for me. Let me give you the basics.
The Heart Sellers is about two women having a conversation. Becca Q.Co is Luna, an excited, chatty Filipino with a non-stop patter and little in the way of a filter. Seoyoung Park is Jane, a quiet, timid Korean still coming to grips with the English language. Neither Luna, nor Jane are their birth names, which is part of the challenges they're facing in this new world. Both are married to medical students, and are left to their own devices while their husbands pull long shifts. Both are outside traditional American society, and are lonely. Luna encounters Jane in a local grocery and invites her home. The play is about that evening of two women from different cultures uniting in the shadow of a larger third culture, and what they are a changing, giving up, and not surrendering in the process.
Like I said, it's a split decision. It didn't connect for me, and felt like an extended SNL skit with Gilda Radner and Loraine Newman. The stakes were low and the pacing sometimes difficult as conversations would start and stop in a natural fashion, and the two women had a lot of physical business to cover over the bare spots (both actors are excellent physical comics). Plus, the characters got drunk over the course of the play. The actors, though, were absolutely brilliant, and held the audience through those blank spots and delivered meaningful and authentic performances. So I ended up neutral.
The Lovely Bride loved it because it connected with her own personal experiences, where she uprooted her life in Pittsburgh after we were married and moved to Wisconsin, where she had to cash in her Susan B. Anthony dollars to do laundry, a glass lasagna pan fell out of a cabinet and smashed her Wonder Woman glass, and a Phyllis Schlafly was on Public Radio that same morning. So yeah, that culture shift hit her hard at the time, and as a result, the play resonated strongly with her.
The play is set in 1973 (They name-check Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech), which increases the distance between me and the characters. The set, however, was pure vintage (I think we had a refrigerator that shade of brown-green), and the music is on-spec - they were playing Elton John and Carole King in the pre-show and the LB and I were singing along.
But I understand where the Lovely B is coming from, and appreciate what she went through all those years ago (Happy 43rd Anniversary, dear), and while I was not moved by the play, I can recognize is a heartfelt presentation about home and hearth and where one's ultimate heart lies. Worth seeing.
More later,
