Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

NAATCO, the company behind the world premiere of Karen Hartman’s family drama Leah’s Train, is a company whose mantra should be adopted by more companies. An Asian-American theater troupe that seeks out non-Asian themed stories, mostly premieres, highlighting how theater should be more universal, with different interpretations to texts to suggest a global likeness (who says only English white people need to utter Shakespeare for it be effective“). So it’s rather disheartening to report that this current production, while occasionally quirky with slivers of distinctive writing, misses the mark, and none of it has to do with the fact that Asian-American actors are portraying Russian Jews.

Ruth (Jennifer Ikeda, formerly of Broadway’s sterling revival of Top Girls last season) is a high-strung physician going through a break-up with her slacker beau Ben (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a fiction writing student who rarely goes to class and wishes to embark on a train trip to explore a bit. Leah is haunted by the life of her now-deceased grandmother Leah (Kristine Haruna Lee), who hid out in trains as a 12-year old searching for her missing brother and cousin, with coins sewed into her pockets and brandishing a chalice that ends up becoming a figure of symbolism for Ruth and her mother Hannah (Mia Katigbak), who has shown up announcing she has left her husband and wants to spend quality time with Ruth, who does not get along with her.

Watching the play unfold, you can practically hear how it would have been cast in more rigid circles. When Hannah paws her hair and lustily intones her cougarish sexiness, it’s impossible not to think of Tovah Feldshuh clawing through such a role, and Ruth could have been written for any number of twentysomething ingénues of the off-Broadway stage. And some of the roles have an appealing flavorfulness that sadly goes undeveloped by much of this cast. Director Jean Randich has encouraged the beautiful Ikeda to shriek too many of her lines, resulting in a portrayal that makes the viewer wonder too often what kind of patient would endure this doctor. And Ozawa Changchien’s portrayal of Ben is a bit too passive; a touch more fire might have really made this character bloom to life, especially opposite writer Hartman’s more distinct women. Haruna Lee, however, is endearing and believable as Leah, wholly embodying a 12-year-old’s state of mind, and sensitively representing the more delicate elements of the script, which eventually tips over into a supernatural state that doesn’t really get a favorable staging, which has nothing to do with its humble means (the train track set, with tracks above and on stage, by Katheryn Monthei, is suitably atmospheric, and the moody lighting by Stephen Petrilli is highly effective).

At 90 minutes, the play should feel much brisker than it does, but certain scenes are blocked to unfold at too leisurely a pace, and for a play with some thriller-like elements to it (Leah and a young charge are fleeing soldiers at much of the midsection), there’s as much slack as the dress Leah wears that ends up doubling as a tourniquet for an ailing, bleeding soldier. Here’s to hoping for more from NAATCO on their next endeavor, and that the train will reach a more gripping destination.