As if Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook aren’t in enough trouble already, along comes Hansol Jung’s Wild Goose Dreams to tell us that social media, accessed of course through the Internet, cause huge problems for romance.
This, of course, isn’t new stage news. For instance, Patrick Marber’s Closer, which opened at London’s National Theatre in 1997 and traveled to Broadway in 1999, also brought us the word that Internet chat rooms could gum up the lovey-dovey works. (Marber’s title is meant ironically, of course: excessive use of appliances don’t bring participating parties closer; quite the opposite.)
Never mind. Maybe it’s just that we’re now in a second generation of anti-internet works with the familiar message gussied up anew. Take Wild Goose Dreams, which unfolds in South Korea, and therefore provides a refreshing change of venue.
[Read Jesse Oxfeld’s ★★★ review here.]
In the intermissionless, almost two-hour finger-wag at the trouble-making Internet, Guk Minsung (Peter Kim) has met North Korea defector Yoo Nanhee (Michelle Krusiec). Be aware that he’s the wild goose of the title because he’s remained in Korea to send his earnings to his wife and daughter in the States, and wild goose is the sobriquet assigned to such men.
With wife and daughter so far away, Minsung is bereft of female companionship and gets the itch to pursue Nanhee, who also has left a loved one behind. That’s her Father (Francis Jue), whom she keeps seeing in her imagination and allows to complicate the developing relationship with Minsung—complicating it further, that is, than the internet-caused harm.
That pulsating problem is represented by seven chorus members (Dan Domingues, Lulu Fall, Kendyl Ito, Jaygee Macapugay, Joel Perez, Jamar Williams, Katrina Yaukey) who play the Internet and other materializations. Keep in mind that chat rooms are usually shown in these kinds of device explorations by projections, but those representations are spared here.
No, what playwright Jung works in are actors speaking in Minsung’s and Nanhee’s ears as if they’re audible chat rooms. The hyperactive chorus members appear as many other figures—like, say, penguins standing in for other Jung conceits too complicated to go into. Okay, just know that there’s a penguin parade as well as a jovial sight gag involving a stuffed penguin in a toilet.
In time, Minsung’s long-distance marriage falters and Nanhee returns to North Korea. These two significant wrinkles in the affair lead to a drastic heightening of the action but only after Minsung posts a YouTube video of his singing about wanting to die. (This is yet more information-highway—does anyone still use the term?—problem-making.)
Unfortunately, the late-in-plot twist (Paul Castles and Jongbin Jung supply the production’s music) feels farfetched, but it functions as the only ploy Jung thinks up to give her denouement weight.
Wild Goose Dreams begins with Jue (the figure has yet to be revealed as Nanhee’s dad) telling a charming fairy tale about a female angel abandoned on earth after shedding her winged clothing for a dip in a pool and then finding them gone. She meets and marries an earthling, and they have a long and successful marriage until she discovers her husband is the one who stole the winged garments.
Jung’s notion is that Minsung and Nanhee are repeating in quotidian terms the fairy tale’s particulars. They’re playing out the possibilities of determining how and when to discover and use figurative wings. The idea is appealing, but as couched in such a busy theatrical scheme, it isn’t so much fun or moving as it’s too frequently irritating.
Speaking of busy, the busy Leigh Silverman (her last credit—The Life Span of a Fact—opened less than a month ago) directed the cast and the traffic with her usual expertise. The chorus members, doubling and tripling and hurriedly changing costumes, exhibit much vigor and verve.
Kim and Krusiec imbue, respectively, Minsung and Nanhee with the correct measure of uncertainty. The right measure of chemistry between them, however, is somehow missing. That he’s drawn to her makes sense, but what she sees in him is a question mark—which could be more a flaw in the writing rather than in the playing.
The most exciting Wild Goose Dreams element is Clint Ramos’ set. He’s turned the Public Theater’s Martinson auditorium into a version of a South Korean honky-tonk. (Is it based on Seoul’s Cheonyngangni Station area?). He’s hung lots of neon signs, inserted a long red runway and projected evocative photographs on the walls. He’s even had the twin rows of Martinson columns brightly painted.
The thing is: Ramos’ environment promises more amusement that the more than occasionally tedious Wild Goose Dreams delivers.
Wild Goose Dreams opened November 14, 2018, at the Public Theater and runs to December 16. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
