Karaoke Stories

It would be easy to mistake Euijoon Kim’s Karaoke Stories for a fringe show. First of all, it’s being performed at the CSV Cultural Center, where several New York International Fringe Festival shows are playing. The ticket price is the same ($15.00) and several of the actors are participating in the Fringe in the hilarious SIDES: The Fear is Real by Mr. Miyagi’s Theatre Company. The fact that Karaoke Stories opened on the weekend that FringeNYC began is unfortunate, since the show is bound to not get as much attention and press as it deserves; this Imua Theatre Company production, smoothly directed by Alan Muraoka, is edgy, hilarious, and well worth seeing.

The play begins with aspiring screenwriter-director Eric (Kaipo Schwab) talking to his producer and buddy Jeff (Jason Schuchman). He’s trying to sell his friend on his new script, Karaoke Stories, which Eric hopes will become the first all-Asian American box office indie success story. Typically, it’s a tale of love gone wrong; or, as Eric puts it, “Everybody has been fucked in the ass by love…It’s a universal theme.” As the friends talk, argue, and read the script from Eric’s laptop computer, the action of the “film” plays out behind them.

The talented (and large!) ensemble cast seems game for just about anything, no matter how ridiculous. Deborah S. Craig as Cheryll is particularly good. Dressed to kill in a sleek black dress (costumes by Deanna Berg), she radiates both bitchiness and charm while zapping unwanted suitors in the privates with a stun gun, maintaining exquisite poise throughout the show. Mel Duane Gionson is appropriately obnoxious as the self-styled Karaoke King who hogs the mic at the bar; his renditions of “Love Is in the Air,” “I Will Survive,” “Send in the Clowns,” and more pepper the show at appropriate moments. James Saito as Toshiro is also a delight, managing to pull off the absurd back story of being a sushi chef in love with a mermaid whom he believes to have been reincarnated as Cheryll. (Suspend your disbelief; the sequence works.)

It’s true that a lot of the show’s humor is sophomoric. There’s a running gag about adding an anal rape scene, as no independent film can be really successful without one, and there’s an elaborate fart joke. Yet Kim’s writing has a hip sensibility that is refreshing. The play quotes, satirizes, or riffs on dozens of films that have permeated pop culture. An orgasmic response to eating sushi is reminiscent of the famous restaurant scene in When Harry Met Sally, while Quentin Tarantino and John Woo films are made the butt of numerous jokes. In reworking their script, Eric and Jeff drop the names of films as diverse as Mulholland Drive, The Crying Game, and Dumb and Dumber. It doesn’t matter if you’re a film buff or not; Karaoke Stories is entertaining on several levels and will keep audiences laughing.