Review - Kung Fu

 

We all already know I'm a huge fan of David Henry Hwang and the Signature Theatre, right?  So I'll skip the preliminaries.  Last night was my subscription ticket to David's new play, Kung Fu.  I've had this ticket for ever so long and I was so happy to finally get to the show.

I don't know much about Bruce Lee, or his travails in Hollywood.  I just sort of thought of him as a James Dean type - a talented man who died too young.  So I was very interested in seeing Kung Fu and learning more about Bruce Lee's life.  Plus, I don't ever watch So You Think You Can Dance on tv, but I was very curious about the young man, Cole Horibe, they cast as the lead.  Bruce Lee is so iconic, you wonder if anyone can live up to expectations.

Kung Fu as a play is a bit of a mishmash.  There's the obligatory book stuff, 'now Bruce Lee did this, now he did that', which is all fine and interesting.  But the super duper stuff was in the flashbacks and the dream sequences that featured amazing fight choreography, elements of Chinese opera and terrifically exciting dance moves.  Those scenes were breathtaking and amazing, so the 'book' scenes seemed rather leaden in comparison.  I don't know what could've been done to prevent that, or if it was just inevitable.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Cole Horibe is so beautiful to watch, it almost hurts.  The way he moves is so silky smooth, yet explosive.  I can't imagine anyone better portraying Bruce Lee as a physical speciman.  His acting, though, was a little one-dimensional.  But I'm sure with more theater experience, he'll improve quickly.  He already has charisma and star quality, now a little acting technique will smooth the edges. 

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

The rest of the cast is very good at playing multiple roles.  I was quite taken with Peter Kim, who played a shy friend from Bruce Lee's early career, and also a high-powered Hollywood tv producer.  Francis Jue, a longtime favorite of mine, is predictably wonderful as Bruce Lee's father, who was an actor in the Chinese theater.  Their scenes together, especially the last explosive scene, really drove the piece.  Well, those scenes and the amazingly dynamic scenes that represented Lee's portrayal of Kato in the Green Hornet tv series, and then the final montage, after Lee returns to Hong Kong to make his iconic movies there.  Oh, and the glow-in-the-dark opium hallucination of the Chinese opera?  Genius.  All of those sequences were worth the price of admission and made the lackluster quality of the other scenes more forgiveable.  At least I think so.  Though if someone could figure out how to make the whole thing as exciting as the flashbacks and dream sequences, Kung Fu could probably run forever.  Of course, if I could figure such things out, I would be running the theater world... :)