Durango

Just like the widower Boo-Seng Lee and his two sons, Isaac and Jimmy, who are impatient to reach their destination in Julia Cho’s Durango, the audience at The Public Theater may experience an “are we there yet” feeling about half-way through this 95-minute drama. The difference is that, while the Lees’ journey to the popular Colorado tourist spot proves disappointing and unfulfilling, Cho’s play reaches its end point in a highly moving, thought-provoking manner, thanks in large part to a scrupulously well-acted production.

On its most superficial level, Durango is about the Korean-American experience, as the three characters struggle with their culture’s expectations to excel in their professional lives and hew to the norm in their personal lives. But this dynamic is shared by numerous ethnic groups — and it is Cho’s gift for creating universality in the midst of specificity that is perhaps her strongest suit.

As the play begins, Boo-Seng (James Saito) is let go from the corporate job he has held for over 20 years as part of company-wide layoffs. When he returns home, he doesn’t disclose this development to his boys, instead suggesting that they take a spur-of-the-moment weekend road-trip to Durango. Isaac (James Yaegashi), a sullen 21-year-old who has less-than-fond memories of past road trips in the days when his mother was alive, resists strenuously; but he ultimately gives in to the wishes of the hopeful, 13-year-old Jimmy Lee (Jon Norman Schneider), who is thrilled at the chance to spend some time with his usually stern father. That this trip will not go smoothly is no surprise.

Each of these characters is keeping a particularly shameful secret — Boo-Seng has a much bigger and more shocking one than having been laid off — and their reluctance to be honest with each other, not to mention themselves, creates an almost unbearable tension during their short journey. Yet, even after the layers are revealed — sometimes overtly, other times obliquely — the truth does not really set anyone free. Moreover, theatergoers who prefer neatly wrapped resolutions may find Cho’s final act frustrating.

This production was seen earlier this year at Long Wharf, which co-produced it. While Chay Yew’s direction often tends towards the sluggish, the cast does full justice to Cho’s work. The always charismatic Yaegashi — the best thing about the ill-fated A Naked Girl on the Appian Way — is 100 percent believable as the slackerish older son who’s so daunted by his parents’ expectations that he doesn’t even try to meet them. He’s especially touching in the scene where he remembers a pivotal conversation with his mother. (Lee and Saito handle similar scenes well, if not quite as effectively.)

Saito, though physically more imposing than the part requires, is nontheless effective as a man so repressed that he’s constantly on the verge of both implosion and explosion. Lee seems a tad too physically mature for Jimmy, even if the script says he’s well-developed for his age; but he gives an emotionally accurate and finely wrought portrayal of an adolescent dealing with a confusing landscape both at home and at school. Ross Bickell is spot-on in his two smallish roles: Jerry, the kindly security guard who must escort Boo-Seng out of the building, and Ned, a retired gentleman whom Boo-Seng meets poolside at a motel. Jay Sullivan handles several minor roles, one in very skimpy attire, with aplomb.

Scenic designer Dan Ostling makes good use of the vast Martinson Hall stage; sliding panels isolate sections of the Lees’ home and, later on, he crafts a realistic motel setting, complete with a small outdoor pool. However, if you’re expecting an all-stops-out vision of Durango, think again; what we see is a vast, empty space with only a single tree for decoration. As it happens, though, Boo hasn’t come to Durango for the scenery. As it turns out, neither have we.