Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Qui Nguyen’s POOR YELLA REDNECKS buoyantly translates the immigrant experience via graphic novels and “Hamilton”

• By drediman
• November 9, 2023
• No Comments

This week at New York City Center’s subterranean Stage I, I was also able to take in Manhattan Theatre Club’s Off-Broadway production of Poor Yella Rednecks by Qui Nguyen. A companion piece to Nguyen’s previous play Vietgone (also presented by MTC in 2016), the new work features ample music and continues the playwright’s ongoing family saga chronicling his parent’s Vietnamese-American immigrant experience — here centering on his mother’s time acclimating herself in El Dorado, Arkansas — particularly as it relates to the challenges of holding a family together under dire socioeconomic conditions.

Those of you who saw Vietgone know that Nguyen isn’t interested in a realistic depiction of his family history. Instead, his aesthetic draws heavily and obviously from graphic novels and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton (but in truth, the play’s familial focus has more in common with Miranda’s In the Heights than it does with the smash founding fathers musical). The narrative is certainly buoyed by such heightened embellishments, but at times the over-the-top approach gets in the way of more nuanced storytelling. But as the playwright’s defense mechanism to temper his painful childhood memories, it serves an empowering purpose. And by inverting the lingual dynamics — Vietnamese is rendered in accessible English — Nguyen is able to effectively and often hilariously (mis-)translate his parents’ immigrant experience for audiences. Although the rap/hip-hop interludes have the tendency to stop the narrative flow dead in its tracks, they also provide much needed depth to the characters’s otherwise cartoonish hues.

Poor Yella Rednecks has been vivaciously directed by Nguyen’s frequent collaborator May Adrales, whose colorful, defiantly feel good staging skillfully brings action movie energy and comic book imagery to the stage. There is also inpired utilization of puppetey (no spoilers here) that surprised me with how much poignancy it brought to the storytelling. As for the performances, they understandably tend toward loud, broad strokes — in line with the production’s overall theatrical vision. In the central roles of the playwright’s parents, Maureen Sebastian and Ben Levin bring smoldering chemistry and a vibrancy to their performances that seems in intentional contrast to the dour cards their characters were dealt.

RECOMMENDED

POOR YELLA REDNECKS
Off-Broadway, Play
Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center
2 hours, 15 minutes (with one intermission)
Through November 26