Fishing for Wives

At the beginning of Edward Sakamoto's Fishing for Wives, a plain-looking fisherman reveals that he has sent his handsome friend's photo to a prospective bride in an attempt get her attention, and now she's on her way to meet him under false pretenses. It sounds like the start of a Cyrano de Bergerac story, in which one friend woos a woman for another. Fishing For Wives, now playing at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row, takes a different, potentially entertaining route, but it never seems to get its head above water.

Young Japanese fisherman Nishi (Viet Vo) desperately wants a wife, but no one, including him, thinks he's good-looking enough to get one on his own. Living in Hawaii around 1913, he writes a letter to have a young woman sent to him from Japan, but he encloses a photo of his better-looking friend, confirmed bachelor and fellow fisherman Aoki (Bobby Foley), in order to cast a more attractive line.

He gets a bite from Yamamoto Shizuko (Kiyo Takami), who reluctantly marries him, but she ends up lavishing all her attentions on the handsome Aoki. Meanwhile, the matchmaking father of blissfully celibate Aoki wants his son to marry as well, so he sends Aoki a series of prospective catches: neurotic Umeko (Rebecca Lee Lerman), sexually aggressive Ihara (Akiko Hiroshima), and self-assured Murashima (Allison Hiroto). Still uninterested in marriage, Aoki vows to send each of them back — eventually — but until then, Yamamoto does her best to sabotage any possibility of another woman getting between her and Aoki. When Nishi is involved in a freak boating accident, however, Yamamoto's feelings for him change in unexpected ways.

Viet Vo gives a humorous performance as the lovelorn Nishi with a downcast demeanor and sad-sack delivery. He's also adept at pantomime, executed impressively in a mesmerizing underwater scene that owes much to Marie Yokoyama's lighting design and David Ige's mime coaching. Takami also does a fine job as Nishi's adulterous wife, and Foley plays Aoki with the feigned naïveté of man who knows he's the best-looking thing around.

Director Ron Nakahara interestingly imbues Fishing for Wives with a fabulist atmosphere by having his actors emote their lines with the exaggerated urgency of fairy-tale characters. Doing so elicits some laughs where the script's jabs at humor sink like lead fishing lures.

Yet none of this is enough to free Fishing for Wives from the nets of redundancy and remoteness. After the entrance of the first prospective wife, then the second, and third, the play feels like one long boat ride back to shore. And on the relatively large stage of the Clurman Theatre, the story and the actors feel too removed to convey the subtle humor of Sakamoto's modest yet potentially endearing tale. This little fish might have fared better in a smaller pond.