City real estate is overrun with ghosts. How many people have lived and died alone in apartments piled up against the clouds? Cities thrive on fantasies of possibility, but behind every door looms the specter of suffering. Just ask the brokers peddling the cleaned up murder scene with the allure of fresh lemon scent.
The would-be tenant of Happy Life’s cramped studio, which opened Tuesday night in New York’s Walkerspace, says she’s used to ghosts clinging to her shoulders. This is a useful combination, as they aren’t the type to bump into the night and call it a day. increase.
Playwright Cathy Ng imagines a world where the boundaries between this world and the next are porous and sticky, and everyone on either side wants a second chance. It’s a rational motive to propel the characters forward, but “Happy Life” doesn’t set the conventional path. Ng’s influences include grisly true crime and manga porn, mortality, eroticism, hello her kitty clashes, and a lively, if sometimes confusing, contemplation of loneliness and loss. can be seen.
The head ghost in charge (or HGIC, one might say Ng characters tend to coin the acronym) was the victim of a brutal murder. Ng borrows details from the 1999 murder of Fan Man-yee, a Hong Kong woman who was kidnapped and tortured by her three men.hello kitty murderBilled as the Cat Mermaid and performed with unbridled ferocity by Priyanka Arya Krishnan, HGIC has a rainbow colored tail hanging from one leg and shaggy cat ears sticking out of her tangled hair. (Costume by Alicia J. Austin). Her insistence on the scene of the deadly ordeal is clear, and there’s good reason she’s in a constant state of rage.
Another remaining soul (Sagan Chen) hanged himself from the bathroom doorknob. His chest is bandaged from top post-mortem surgery performed by his ghostly co-tenant – a self-fulfilling wound that only came to death. It lies in Options (or RO) and the unlikely support of a new mortal roommate (Amy Chung) who is recently divorced and learning to live on her own.
Ng’s storytelling has a playful nature that encourages lighthearted engagement and pauses in rationality. Can ghosts manipulate phone sex? Can anyone see dead people if they really try? Ideas can be related more freely. There is a queer sensibility throughout, both in form and content. But “Happy Life” even forgets to maintain its own internal logic, such as when and why characters can communicate, live or die.
Directed by Kat Yen Theater Haas, dial up instead of softening the tendency to the greatest representation of Ng. Each performance is tuned to a static frequency — powerful and ruthless illusions, relentlessly gentle new crew members — to reduce the possibility of more dynamic changes in characters. Appropriately neutral but hopelessly drab, the Guerlain-designed apartment in shades of gray is as apt a crime scene as it is a blank slate of new beginnings.
“Happy Life” recounts the details of the “Hello Kitty” murders with almost maniacal glee and grizzly details over and over again. It could be a high-profile comment on how women are infantilized, dehumanized, and ultimately consumed by a culture obsessed with sex and death. But its play has a closed nature that resists wider resonance beyond the prescribed range. A phone call comes from inside the studio, who is it on?
happy life
Until August 6th at Walkerspace in Manhattan. thehearttheater.comRunning time: 2 hours 20 minutes.