The 41-year-old Korean-American playwright Young Jean Lee pokes fun at 1) dysfunctional families, 2) childish white men, and 3) psychological incomprehension in Straight White Men, now in its West Coast premiere at Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.
Lee, a darling of the New York experimental theater scene, has written a more-or-less traditional play this time around, one with linear construction and characters right out of a TV sitcom in the way they never alter comic behavior or delivery. Who knows? Maybe sitcoms are really Lee’s main target, not any of the above.
Straight White Men gives us the Norton family: Ed, a father (Richard Riehle) and his three sons who have gathered to celebrate Christmas in what becomes a parody of togetherness. Two of the sons are visiting the mid-west hearth: Jake (Gary Wilmes) is a sardonic, amoral New York banker who never shuts up; Drew (Frank Boyd) is a novelist whose lost faith in leftist ideals has put him on a psychiatrist’s couch. Matt (Brian Slaten) is the real problem manchild, though: although he’s got a PhD and is considered the smartest of all the Nortons, he’s content to live at home and care for his elderly father. His excuse for this withdrawal from life: crushing student-loan debts and a depressive mind-set that causes him to break into tears at inopportune times. Alternately bewildered and enraged by his behavior, Jake and Drew take turns at trying to provoke him into fleeing the nest and living up to his potential. Matt’s only ally is his father, who in his dim but sympathetic way believes Matt will somehow manage to resolve his hangups (only to have a change of heart in the play’s climactic scene). Lee treats these conflicts in largely comic fashion: the siblings continually poke fun at each other, play childish (but hilarious) games, imitate rock stars and djs, get drunk, dance their fool heads off, dress up in outrageous costumes, make faces, carry on like 21st-century Marx brothers. Lee choreographs all of this action with impressive timing and precision, coaxing non-stop laughter out of the audience. Straight White Men purports to question America’s values, challenge the way we—or at least straight white men—act and think today, but these serious concerns get swept away in the play’s farcical tumult. No one, least of all Matt, can understand why he acts the way he does. Not that it matters, really. It’s hard to make an important statement in what is essentially a madcap comedy.
