By Sheila Barth
During World War II, inhumanities and atrocities weren’t limited to Nazi Germany. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the US created its own black mark in history by rounding up more than 120,000 loyal Japanese-American citizens and placing them in internment camps.
Despite several who were proud American patriots who fought in World War I, they and their families were treated disrespectfully. Some were beaten and incarcerated without cause.
Popular actor-writer-activist George Takei, better known as Sulu, the helmsman of Starship Enterprise, on the original “Star Trek,” experienced this infamy when he was 5-9 years old. His family was taken from their home in Los Angeles and placed in barracks, in camps lined with thick barbed wire. “Allegiance,” a two-act musical, with book by Marc Acito, Jay Kuo, and Lorenze Thione, (music and lyrics by Kuo), is inspired by Takei’s experience. However, it doesn’t focus on the negative, said Thione. “It’s about universal, uplifting themes: family, hope, redemption, and love.”
There’s also an underlining message – a warning to never let this unjust cruelty happen again in the US, to any group of people. Two years ago, when “Allegiance” hit Broadway, Takei made his Broadway debut at 78 years old. The play recently appeared to sold-out crowds for five weeks at SpeakEasy Stage Company, directed by award-winning Artistic Director Paul Daigneault, but its haunting memories linger with theatergoers, who were moved to silence several times during the performance.
Although this entire cast is outstanding, delivering command performances are: Sam Tanabe portraying patriotic Sammy Kimura; Tyler Simahk as Sammy’s foil, Frankie Suzuki, and Sammy’s sister Kei Kimura’s beloved; Ron Domingo as grandfather Tatsuo Kimura; Gary Thomas Ng, portraying Sam Kimura and Ojii-chan; and Melissa Geerlof portraying sympathetic encampment nurse Hannah Campbell, who becomes Sammy’s beloved; and Grace Yoo, portraying Sammy’s sister, Kei, whose loyalty gets caught between her brother and lover.
Set on Eric Levenson’s stark, gray-hued stage with few props, the play opens in Salinas, Calif in 2001, flashes back to 1941, moves to the Kimura family’s relocated camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and Washington, DC in 1942. The second act opening, emblazoned with Daniel Jentzen’s crimson red lighting and Andrew Duncan Will’s explosive battle sounds, shifts back and forth to Pisa, Italy, Heart Mountain, Tule Lake, Vosges Mountains, France in 1944; returns to Heart Mountain, Washington DC and San Francisco in 1945; and concludes where it began, in San Francisco, 2001.
Throughout these years, Miranda Kau Giurleo’s historically accurate military and conventional clothing recall the Great War era. Besides highlighting the beauty and honor of Japanese culture (kudos, award-winning choreographer Ilyse Robbins and Japanese traditional choreographer Kendyl Yokoyama), “Allegiance” poignantly embraces the schism among incarcerated Japanese families, and the men who strongly believed it was their patriotic duty to serve in the US military to prove their loyalty. Some interned relatives and friends who angrily resisted were considered traitors and accused of committing treason.Despite these clashes and conflicts, the displaced Japanese shared a single cry- “Gaman”- meaning endure with patience and dignity.
The play opens during a happy, annual festival, with Japanese families celebrating hope, hanging their wishes on tree branches, and dancing merrily. There’s a change in the wind, they sing, when they suddenly must gather only what they can carry, and leave their homes.
As individual clashes ensue and the war escalates in songs “Resist,” “I Ought to Go,” and “Get in the Game,” Kei and Frankie, Sammy and Hannah express their love tenderly in harmonic duets.
Pathos among themselves and death on the battlefield are startling, but when tragedy strikes the Kimuras and ` Hannah, theatergoers were stunned into silence. “Allegiance” is a provocative musical production that beckons theatergoers to look inside their own hearts, and take heed.
