Kanji By Starlight

Ronald Hayden

In between are stories of family and magic, always tinged by what it means to be a Sansei -- a third-generation Japanese-American. There is the history of World War II internment on his mother's side of the family (but not his father's side, who had the luck of being in Hawaii: "In Hawaii the Japanese were a third of the work force; they decided that shipping them all off would be a bad idea...")

There is David in school, learning to use magic to distract the kids from his image as a "chink", mystified to learn about Chung Ling Soo, the Chinese magician famous for dying while performing the bullet catching trick. After his death, it was discovered that Chung Ling Soo was really William Robinson, a white guy acting Chinese in order to gain acceptance.

David tells the stories with the help of magic and of his strict black-clad assistant, actress Michelle Rariden, who does a very good job of portraying several characters from David's past without ever speaking a word. Unlike the typical magic performance, the tricks are not intended to rule this performance; they are there as a story-telling device to help the story flow and to highlight important moments.

Jumping from moment to moment and story to story, David works to bring small details into the picture. Probably the most creative point in this show is his use of the ancient and usually pretty lifeless "Chinese linking rings". The most common routine uses eight rings and is filled with lots of linking and unlinking. David uses two rings, and only links and unlinks them once. But the linking isn't even the interesting part -- as he tells about a night he experienced as a biology student performing dreary duties at the edge of a lake, a ring is dragged on the floor producing the sound of a distant foghorn, then becomes the rim of a bucket, then the sun rising over the water, and finally the rings cling together repeatedly in the sound of an interminable clock.

The experiences of a Japanese-American family combined with magic provides a lot of potential, and at moments this potential comes out in the show. David is a good actor with a strong voice and presence, and a compelling way of using his eyes to comment on the situation. Unfortunately, most of the magic is not well-integrated into the show and most of the magic is, frankly, two-bit stuff. With the exception of the linking rings, the use of stale and minor off-the-shelf tricks (cups and balls, rice bowls, a really hokey selection-forcing plastic bag) does not do justice to the history being told. The process of melding the magic and stories together has resulted mostly in warping the stories in non-sensical ways, causing David to inject falsely ringing elements in an attempt to bring logic to what he's doing, and worse, to tell stories that sound like they were made up for some trivial piece of magic. Finally, even though David's bio states he has twenty years of experience with magic, the magic is mostly poorly performed. In itself this might not be a determining factor, if the integration of elements were stronger.

So this show is not there yet. Nonetheless, David has set his sights high. His is the first show I've seen that really tries to bring theater to magic, to give more meaning than just the tricks. He has the hardest thing: A great and unique concept. With work it could really become something. Poorly performed or not, he does reflect mirrored light into the audience; he does pull starlight from the sky.