Lauren Yee’s Kind of Theatrical Magic

Imagine that you’re a theater critic in a fairy tale. A genie has promised to grant your dearest wish if you can find a play that’s a spot-on cultural satire, a deliciously wacky farce, and a moving, essentially autobiographical drama, all at once.As it turns out, such a gem has just opened off-Broadway, and it also happens to have a strong fantastical bent. If you’ve been paying attention to emerging playwrights in recent years, you may be able to guess the author: It’s Lauren Yee, who with genre-bending, wildly imaginative plays such as “Cambodian Rock Band” and “Mother Russia” has emerged as one of the most original and delightful voices around.With “King of the Yees,” now being produced by Signature Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Ms. Yee gets more personal, offering a partly true, partly “kind of true” story focusing on her relationship with her father. The result is as fresh and funny as anything she has written, as well as her most touching, transporting work yet.“Yees” is set in San Francisco’s Chinatown district, near where Ms. Yee grew up, and where her father, Larry, was an active member of the Yee Fung Toy Family Association, established by clansmen when they arrived in the United States in the late 19th century to honor their ancestors and get to know other Yees.Mr. Yee also kept busy volunteering for a state senator who shared his surname and was busted on corruption and racketeering charges in 2014, during the time period that inspired this play. The first act ends as Larry, played by celebrated theater stalwart Francis Jue, learns of the politician’s arrest.As the play opens, Maureen Sebastian and David Shih, two of three comically adroit, briskly versatile actors who juggle a variety of characters under Joshua Kahan Brody’s expert direction — the third, Jon Norman Schneider, makes a surprise entrance that I won’t spoil — introduce themselves as Lauren and Larry Yee. Then Mr. Jue enters, stomping on the fourth wall in case anyone didn’t realize it had been knocked down.“I can’t talk right now,” Larry—the character, that is—announces into a phone. “I’m in Lauren’s play.” His daughter, who’s also in town to celebrate his 60th birthday, hadn’t planned on him turning up at this moment, and she grows uncomfortable as he proceeds to charm her actors and the audience, even handing out water bottles.Mr. Jue evinces, hilariously, both Larry’s eagerness to please and his pride, each rooted in centuries of historical upheaval and tradition that will inform “Yees” through even its kookiest twists and turns. In the second act, Lauren — endearingly played by Kelly Marie Tran, an alumna of the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy — embarks on a fanciful quest through which she meets Chinatown’s “Lum elders,” whom she entices by telling them that, as a Yale graduate, she can help their grandchildren with college applications.We also encounter the “Model Ancestor,” to whom the Yee clan traces its roots, depicted here to evoke a sassy drag queen, fabulously costumed by Michelle J. Li and scrumptiously played by Mr. Schneider. Another sequence nodding to the Lion Dance, a traditional pastime intended to bring good fortune, mixes pop and show tunes and, at a recent preview, had me laughing until my eyes teared up.What gives these moments poignance as well as humor is Lauren’s sense of alienation from the Chinatown community and the heritage it represents. She reminds us several times that she doesn’t even speak the language, though she’s informed, in another uproarious segment, that she has Chinese in her blood and bones.Seldom in contemporary plays are identity and the conflicts it can engender addressed with as much insight and warmth as Ms. Yee summons here. Her gifts may not technically be magical, but to this critic, they seem awfully close.

Lauren Yee’s Kind of Theatrical Magic

Lauren Yee’s Kind of Theatrical Magic

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