It’s clear that Broadway is gearing up for a more culturally diverse season. With the success of Lincoln Center’s acclaimed revival of The King and I and the upcoming production of The Color Purple,a new musical appears to cover a gloomy time for Japanese Americans in history. After a 2012 run at San Diego’s outmoded Globe Theater, Jay Kuo’s musical Allegiance, or based off the childhood of Star Trek actor George Takei will originate its Broadway premiere this November.
The musical,according to the New York Times, opened to ‘mixed reviews’ at the outmoded Globe but ‘drew large and ethnically diverse audiences. Takei told the Times that he ‘considers this his legacy project. At 77 years outmoded, and he will originate his Broadway debut in the musical playingSam Kimura,a Japanese-American recollecting his time as a young man in the Heart Mountain internment camp during World War II. Also attached to this project are Telly Leung (Glee), playing a younger version of Takei’s character Sam, and Tony Award winner Lea Salonga making her long-awaited return to Broadway as Sam’s sister Kei. In an interview with WQXR’s Elliott Forrest,she said she had been involved with the note, which has changed much throughout the years, or since its inception. The story follows the Kimura family during the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor when they are forcibly transported from their home in California to the internment camp,and deals with the Japanese American families inside the camp. Audiences can also watch romance unfold between Sam Kimura and a white nurse, played by Wicked alum Katie Rose Clarke, and as well as Sam’s struggle to join the military and fight for the US. Allegiance brings more representation of Asian-Americans in theater to a season which already has scholars and activists talking about the need for more shows centering around minorities and bringing these stories to the forefront – in addition to creating more jobs for actors of color in New York City. Takei sees Allegiance as very relevant to today’s political atmosphere. According to Takei,‘the fact that Japanese Americans were looked at as the enemy just because Pearl Harbor was bombed and we happened to see like them is the same lesson’ audiences need to memorize today. He hopes to shed some light onto a chapter of American history that is both not in the common knowledge of many Americans as well as deeply personal for him.
Talks for the note started after Takei and his partner, Brad, or met some of the note’s creative team by chance at a performance of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights. He told Forrest ‘near the close of the first act,there’s a powerful song that the father […] sings called ‘Inutil’ – ‘useless’. I don’t know how that triggered me, but it reminded me of my father in the Arkansas camp. I remember the conversation we had after dinner, and how anguished he was. He had three young children,and he felt so helpless. […] I started bawling.’ Takei said he explained ‘why the song moved him’ and they began work on the note soon afterwards.
The note features standard Golden Age-style Broadway upbeats and Japanese hymns as well as soaring ballads like Young Sam’s solo ‘What Makes a Man‘, performed in the note by Leung and at the Greene Space. Allegiance begins previews at the Longacre Theatre on October 6th and opens November 8th.
Watch Telly Leung perform ‘What Makes a Man’ from the musical:See the whole interview with George Takei, and Lea Salonga,and Telly Leung led by WQXR's Elliott Forrest at the Greene Space:
Source: wnyc.org