KEIKO GREEN’S “EMPTY RIDE” MAKES WORLD PREMIERE AT OLD GLOBE

 Keiko Green’s “Empty Ride” is not the first of her plays to premiere at the Old Globe or for that matter, around town. Her “Exotic Deadly or The MSG” play premiered at the Old Globe a few years ago and another of her plays, “Sharon” or Who the Fu** is Sharon?” premiered at Cygnet.

In each of my reviews, I mentioned that Green was someone to keep an eye on as a fresh pair of eyes coming from an Asian-American perspective.

And here she is again back at the Old Globe in an original 90 min. play commissioned by the Globe, “Empty Ride”, set in 2016 in Ishinomaki, Japan, where over 3,000 humans were killed in the great tsunami following the 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake of 2011. In all some 20,000 people were killed in that earthquake.

Michele Selene Ang

“Empty Ride” is ghostly but not ghastly, it’s oft times funny but not fun, it’s fiction but based on fact and its characters are somewhat interesting, but there are too many of them making a 90 minute play seem like an eternity.

David Rosenberg and Jojo Gonzalez

 

Kisa (an excellent Michele Selene Ang) arrives in Ishinomak, Japan from Paris where she was studying art, to take care of her ailing, loving, broke and broken father Isamu (on target Jojo Gonzales). Isamu owns a taxi service and Kisa wants to take up the reigns and drive it for him to make some money to pay the huge bills he mounted.  

Although he warns her not to drive at night, that’s exactly what he was doing while picking up passengers or ghosts of the past and not getting any revenue, so the story goes. She too is changed by the ‘evening guests'.

Michele Selene Ang, Major Curda and Jully Lee

But during the day she encounters several people from her past: her old boyfriend Toru (a bouncy, yet annoying  Major Curda) who wants things as they were when they were younger, his greedy sister Sachico (talented Jully Lee also plays several other characters), who wants to take advantage of the situation and resell the ruins of the city to developers, and neighbor, Alex (David Rosenberg who also played in her ‘Sharon’ play) was looking after Kisa’s father. He has his own ghost story to tell in a too long soliloquy.

Moving everyone about for the play to make sense in the in the round theatre is director Sivan Battat. It’s almost spine chilling watching both Kisa and Toru move the ‘cab’ around the stage in a perfectly choreographed  step over step (no credit is given for choreography) as if we are there as passengers. Adam Rigg’s scenic design is minimal and Avi Armon’s sound design is as ghostly as the ghosts picked up by the taxi drivers.

Michele Selene Ang

 

Green has given us another look into her imagination and the complexity of her thoughts. Complexity is the key word. As “Empty Ride” unfolds, it gets over complicated and unfocused with too many storylines and characters that add nothing to the overall outcome of the play. 

With some culling and refocusing  some of the ghosts might just have a story to tell after all. 

See you at the theatre. 

Enjoy.  

     

When: When: runs through March 2. 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. (plus 2 p.m. matinee on Feb. 26)

Where: Old Globe Theatre’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, Balboa Park

Photo: Rich Soublet II

Tickets: $31 and up

Phone: 619-234-5623

Online: theoldglobe.org