If there were an award for "Most Japanese Cultural Signifiers in the Title of an Off-Broadway Show," Randall David Cook's Sake with the Haiku Geisha would win it hands down. This is the dramatic equivalent of naming a Japanese restaurant "Teriyaki Boy"; you don't walk in expecting an authentic experience. As a result, you are inclined to forgive the occasional moments of broad caricature, and you're surprised that the play contains some depth and insight.

Sake is set in Japan in the early 1990s, a fact that Cook subtly reveals through pointed references to then-president George H.W. Bush vomiting on the Japanese prime minister. It follows the participants of a foreign language exchange pro[...]