Table Tennis, Anyone?

The always interesting goings-on at 59E59 continue in 2006 as the Reverie Company presents two plays there in repertory: Joe Basque’s excellent Ping Pong Diplomacy and Carlos Lacamara’s sturdy if schematic Havana Bourgeois.

Ping Pong Diplomacy is a modern-day variation on Romeo and Juliet. The play begins in 1971, when the American Table Tennis Team spearheaded the opening of relations between the U.S. and communist China, presaging President Nixon’s change in American policy toward the country in 1972. During the team’s visit, a male U.S. champion meets and falls in love with a female champion from Red China. Even minus Shakespeare’s language, the friar, and the poison, this is still a heartbreaking story. It is, in fact, a modern tragedy wherein countries substitute for families.

The play is a memory piece narrated by Lyman Nick Bedford (Christopher Graham), who conjures up the era when he was a young table tennis champ, made the cover of Time magazine, and met a woman he would love forever but never even kiss. That the older Lyman is in every scene, watching and reacting to his past, is an awkward convention — and that’s especially true because Jesse Hooker as young Lyman is such a natural actor compared to Graham.

One of the most entertaining scenes in Ping Pong Diplomacy centers on a dumbfounded Chinese beauracrat’s attempt to explain to the country’s table tennis team members how to conduct themselves at an American dinner party. Meanwhile, the romance between Lyman and Zhu (Constance Wu) is played out with delicacy and sweet innocence. Kim Donovan perfectly underplays the role of Lyman’s female buddy; good work is also done by Robert Wu, Jeffrey Nauman, and Jerzy Gwiazdowski in other roles. David Hilder has directed the production with economy — even the ping pong table is noticeably tiny — but the players and the play fill the theater with their art and their talent.

Havana Bourgeois, set in Cuba just before and during Fidel Castro’s rise to power, is a thoughtful drama about the choices people make as history marches through their lives. There’s a timeless quality to this tale, which could have just as easily been set in Germany in 1933 or any other country on the verge of a dictator’s takeover. The Bourgeois of the title is Alberto (James Martinez), the art director of an ad agency, who stands up for Manuel (Rashaad Ernesto Green), the company’s messenger boy. Manuel has lately moved to Havana from the countryside; a well-meaning young man, he gets caught up in the revolution because he feels that the poor people of Cuba will have better lives under Castro. What he fails to see is that the ideals of the revolution are swiftly being subverted.

Meanwhile, Alberto watches as his bourgeois world crumbles around him. His close friend and father figure at the ad agency, an older, gay artist named Panchito (played with sarcastic wit by George Bass), must either flee Cuba or die. The same is true for the owner of the company. The play pivots on what Alberto will do. He is married to a woman with deep ties to Cuba, and the couple has a new baby. Where does love of country end and love of freedom begin? How strong are the bonds of family and friendship?

There is great potential for drama in Havana Bourgeois, but the play suffers from having too many representative “types” instead of fully rounded characters. We want to care deeply about the fates of these people, but it’s difficult to do so when they are moved across the stage like chess pieces. Still, as an inside look at Cuba at a transitional point in its history, Havana Bourgeois is a worthy piece of work.

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[To contact the Siegels directly, e-mail them at siegels@theatermania.com.]