Posted on: Thursday, March 3, 2005
STAGE REVIEW
Surfing the stage with Eddie Aikau, Rell Sunn
By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic
The pair of one-acts now at Kumu Kahua give insight into how legends are formed in the Hawai'i surf culture and demonstrate the playwright's ability to tell a successful story in two significantly different styles. They are a joint production of Kumu Kahua Theatre and the Honolulu Theatre for Youth.
Brad Goda For this production, Wake has added "Queen of Makaha," based on surfer Rell Sunn, who is known for promoting several local causes in addition to conquering the waves. It unfolds as traditional exposition, but — while Sunn appears as a fully participating character — her achievements are recounted by a friend who knows them intimately to one who is unaware.
"Queen of Makaha" is the better choice for the opening piece, as it takes a quiet and introspective tone. Sunn has arrived at a Mainland cancer treatment center. Her roommate is a tense and withdrawn young woman who refuses to communicate with Sunn, or with her own incessantly telephoning mother.
Nara Springer Cardenas gives Sunn, at age 38, the right amount of warmth and maturity to cope with a difficult roommate and begin to draw her out of her defensive shell. Ashley Larson is correctly angry and edgy as the younger woman.
"Eddie Would Go" and "Queen of Makaha (Rell Sunn)," double- bill about local surfing legends, by Honolulu Theatre for Youth
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays through March 27
Kumu Kahua Theatre
$16
536-4441 In a neatly wrapped one-act, the women draw closer as Sunn's story is told.
By contrast, "Eddie Would Go" is much more animated, boisterous and risky, as three young surfer friends (Reb Beau Allen, BullDog and Hermen Tesoro Jr.) educate a fourth (Jason Kanda), who has never heard of Eddie Aikau and is afraid of the ocean.
This is a live-wire performance, where director Harry Wong III exercises his dramatic imagination and seems to give his cast free rein. Understand that it is all tightly controlled, but when the audience becomes the ocean and the cast begins to surf the seating area, we get the impression of definite mayhem — especially with Allen dangling overhead, hanging by his heels from a lighting pipe.
Back on shore, the cast rarely allows the audience to become complacently settled. The guys turn a park bench into a cresting wave (Sunn does the same with a hospital bed, but it feels more risky here), a collapsing canoe, and a pulpit for proselytizing.
So while "Queen of Makaha" is conventionally representational, "Eddie Would Go" is dynamically presentational. Although the styles are quite different, the plays are interestingly alike.
In the end, a fearful character is won over, inspired by the heroic legends told by others — the modern-day equivalent of a high priest chanting the lineage of a king.
"Eddie Would Go" is the second outing for Bryan Hiroshi Wake's story of Eddie Aikau, who went missing while swimming ashore from the stranded voyaging canoe Hokule'a. An earlier version toured locally in school and public performances. In both versions, Aikau's story is told by a group of worshipful teen boys. He never appears as a fully drawn character, but is sporadically impersonated as the youngsters act out his significant episodes.
From left, BullDog, Reb Beau Allen, front; Jason Kanda, holding shorts; and Hermen Tesoro Jr. star in "Eddie Would Go."
But it is Janice Terukina as Sunn's friend Carol who opens up the show with animated expressions and right-on Island humor. Terukina is so successful at what she does that we overlook the blatant plotting device to tell of Sunn's achievements. We are having simply too much fun to notice.
On stage
