Theatre in Review: The Great Leap (Atlantic Theater Stage II)

	Ned Eisenberg, B.D. Wong. Photo: Ahron R. Foster

It's good to have B. D. Wong back, again working for the Chinese Communist Party. As you surely know, the actor first came to prominence, in M. Butterfly, as the slippery female impersonator dispatched by the Mao regime to ensnare a gullible French diplomat. In The Great Leap, he is Wen Chang, a lowly Party translator who, more or less against his will, ends up coaching the nascent Chinese national basketball team. It would be an understatement to say that he isn't prepared for the job: Comparing his players with a visiting US team from San Francisco State University, he asks, in dismay, "They were supposed to be tall?"

The US team is coached by Saul (Ned Eisenberg), a brash American who tries to teach Wen to develop an aggressive attitude. "It is always your turn, every time you are on that court, it is always your turn," he says, attempting to instill a can-do attitude. Rather than getting the message, Wen marvels at this "American way of thinking." And when Saul tries to school him in the art of talking trash to one's opponents, the results are less that galvanizing. The best Wen can do is "You are an instrument of a capitalist state!" and "You are not well liked within the party!"

This part of The Great Leap is set in 1971; the Cultural Revolution is still wreaking havoc on the Chinese people and Wen has only recently returned from rehabilitation in the countryside; the last thing he wants is to be noticed. "Growing up, you did not want to be someone," he says. "You wanted to be the person three people behind someone, because being someone could get you killed." Wong plays Wen's encounter with Saul, who comes from a world he can only imagine, for all the understated comedy in Lauren Yee's script is worth. His perfectly timed responses to Saul's assertive ways are a sharp reminder that we don't see enough of this fine actor, who busies himself with film and television assignments.

The rest of The Great Leap takes place in 1989, when Saul returns with his team for a rematch. The years have reversed the men's circumstances. After too many losing seasons, Saul is hanging on to his career by his fingernails; Wen is now a person of consequence in the Party, ready to play hardball to avenge the losses inflicted by the US team eighteen years earlier. He moves, coolly but firmly, to disqualify the Americans' best player, and when a young interloper confronts him with long-suppressed facts from his past, his curt dismissal is the act of a profoundly changed man. Wong superbly conveys Wen's transition from shy, unworldly basketball neophyte to tough-minded operator focused on maintaining his Party position. At the same time, he conveys the underlying sadness of "being an onlooker to your own life, someone who is always watching." It's a remarkable performance, all the more impressive for the actor's skill at suggesting profound emotions beneath the placid face he presents to the world.

The other players in The Great Leap are equally adept. Tony Aidan Vo galvanizes each of his scenes as Manford, a bantamweight bundle of furious energy who hustles his way onto Saul's team, despite being an undersized high-school student utterly lacking in people skills. ("The only player I've ever heard of getting thrown out of a game for fighting with his own teammates," Saul says in wonderment mixed with grudging admiration.) As the arguably too-twisty plot eventually makes clear, Manford has a deeply personal reason for making the team and going to China, which will prove devastating to Wen; suffice to say that Vo more than holds his own in his scenes with Wong, and that's no small achievement. The actor also has a nice way of finding the very real vulnerabilities inside his brusque, nakedly ambitious character.

Vo also impresses in his argumentative encounters with Eisenberg's Saul, whose dictatorial manner meets its match in the younger man's refusal to accept "no" as an answer. Eisenberg has an especially tough assignment: Saul is supposed to be an amusing vulgarian; as written by Yee, he is merely a vulgarian. (His smack talk is woefully lacking in wit.) He nevertheless creates an authentically lonely figure who has sacrificed his family to his career, which is slipping down the drain and can only be rescued -- he hopes --- by landing a significant win against the Chinese team.

Ali Ahn is also solid as a not-quite relative who keeps an eye on the orphaned Manford, popping up from time to time to serve as the voice of reason. (Having been to China as a student, she warns him, "I know when you think China you think 'wow' and 'cool' and 'one billion other mes,' but it's not...all you're going to see is what forty years in the dark does to a country." The director, Taibi Magar, has handled her cast of newcomers and old pros deftly.

The production design is just right, as well: Takeshi Kata's basketball-court set is enlivened by David Bengali's projections of location-setting graphics as well as images of Mao-era China, among them a crowd of young people waving their Little Red Books; an especially compelling stage tableau features Manford leading a pro-US chant in Tiananmen Square, in a major plot point. Eric Southern's lighting dramatically changes the mood of the space. Tilly Grimes' costumes neatly delineate the play's two time periods. Broken Chord supplies a number of apt sound effects, providing crucial support to the climactic game, which happens offstage and is narrated by the characters.

There's plenty of talent to be seen at Atlantic Stage II, but, engaging as it is, The Great Leap runs into trouble in its later passages, as things get increasingly tangled in the wildest coincidences. Charles Dickens is evoked -- this is indeed a tale of two cities -- but even he might balk at a plot that requires one character to be smuggled out of China in 1971 (Yee doesn't even bother to explain how it happened), a life-altering revelation buried in a blurry newspaper photograph, and a hidden kinship that defies belief. Any one of these would probably be acceptable by itself; taken together, they constitute prima facie evidence of a playwright pushing her luck. Even so, The Great Leap doesn't officially become shameless until the end, when Yee forces into the play the iconic image of the man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square. At this point, if Deng Xiaoping himself had dropped by for a chat, I would not have been at all surprised.

Still, the cast and dialogue are usually lively, and Wong gives one of the first notable performances of the new season. His quietly focused, witty, and often moving depiction of this complex character provides plenty of evidence that this fine actor still has plenty of game. -- David Barbour