Contemplating the fragility of life at the individual, racial and species levels, EM Lewis' new drama, "Song of Extinction," artfully balances its theme of mortality between the intimate and the macroscopic.
Revolving around the tenuous connection between an alienated high school biology teacher and a troubled student, Lewis' lyrical text explores inner psychological states with remarkable eloquence and clarity -- ably depicted by a first-rate Moving Arts cast.
The teacher, Khim Phan (Darrell Kunitomi) is a solitary Cambodian refugee who survived the genocide of the killing fields and remains haunted by the memory of his family, who didn't. Khim knows things about extinction he's afraid to tell his students, retreating instead into scientific detachment from which even the rapidly escalating disappearance of entire species becomes a bloodless abstraction.
Wrenching Khim from his insular cocoon is the unraveling spectacle of Max (Will Faught), a 15-year-old musical prodigy whose mother (Lori Yeghiayan) is dying of stomach cancer. Max's father (Michael Shutt), a field biologist, is too busy -- or grief-stricken -- to deal with his wife's terminal condition, and fixates on his crusade to save an endangered beetle.
When Max's inability to cope with this emotional wreckage forces Khim to step in as a surrogate father figure, the setup is ripe for shameless heart string-plucking. Fortunately, director Heidi Helen Davis' rich, visually expressive staging steers well clear of cheap sentimentality. Even when the dialogue strays at times from literal credibility, the emotional rapport between these characters remains believably frayed and partial, binding together personal loss, genocide and biological devastation with felt truths.
-- Philip Brandes
"Song of Extinction," [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 and 7 p.m. Sundays (dark Thanksgiving). Ends Dec. 14. $20, Sunday evenings pay-what-you-can. (323) 461-3673. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.
--
Amusing, focused 'Fata Morgana'
A poignant coming-of-age saga lurks within the risque froth of "Fata Morgana." Hungarian writer Ernest Vajda's 1924 romantic comedy receives a first-rate revival, as absorbing as it is amusing, by Pacific Resident Theatre.
