'Persimmons' overambitious, but enjoyable

Something about the program for Persimmons in Winter, this weekend's offering at the Yale Cabaret, is apt to make an audience member feel downright skittish. Certainly, the graphic design is amiable, the fonts non-threatening, and the color invitingly persimmon-ish. But the director's note, typically a forum for pleasantries and pithy epigraphs, reads more like a plea for clemency.

Sheryl Anderson, DRA '98, declares that Persimmons marks her debut as a director and Vivian Keh's, DRA '98, as a playwright. She congratulates Keh for "her astounding drive to complete the play in time for the Cabaret spring season, on top of the rigors of the third-year acting program." She also assures the reader that participation in the Yale Drama School's Collaborative Workshop Process, "in which promising playwrighting students present their new works, has prepared us to explore and nurture Vivian's original script here in the Cabaret." In other words, the viewer's first brush with the play involves its director saying, "I've never directed, the playwright has never written a play, but she did a great job especially considering that she was very rushed and she sure had a lot of other things to do." This just doesn't bode well for the content of the play.

To the Cabaret's credit, Persimmons is not nearly so problematic as the director's note might lead one to believe. An episodically structured three-actor piece, it recounts the life stories of two Korean sisters. Spanning 50 years, it ricochets from World War II Korea to present-day California to the Korean War to an East Coast golf course and back again. Geraldine Kok, DRA '00, and playwright Keh play sisters Soon and Young with expressiveness and appeal. And the charming Michael Braun, TC '00, in a tryptic of male roles, holds his undergraduate own.

While a Cabaret show usually lasts only 45 or 50 minutes, the 70-minute Persimmons runs long in more ways than one. Anderson and Keh certainly took on a tall order. An unconventional, non-linear exploration of the lives of two women isn't exactly a walk in the park (although Persimmons begins with just that). Eventually, the range and demands of the script overwhelm Keh's dialogue and the scenes and motifs grow wearied and repetitive. And, while Anderson has some intriguing ideas, the direction betrays an unsteadiness and inconsistency which drags down the latter end of the play. Accents come and go, many unremarkable scenes receive undue indulgence, and the audience is sporadically acknowledged and then pointedly ignored.

Nevertheless, the sisters' blend of perversion and preciousness proves intriguing (it's not every girl who can smear semen all over her sister's face and then laugh, saying, "Oh, goshy"). Certain scenes are very finely articulated and expressed. It's an ambitious, though uneven, evening. No apology necessary.

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