I’ve been telling friends and colleagues to see Cambodian Rock Band, a musical production at the Arts Club’s Stanley Theatre. Why? It’s funny and dark and addresses issues that are very much alive today with repressed family stories, refugees from civil wars, and overcoming trauma. And… the music is like going to see a great rock concert, part cover tunes, and original songs by the Cambodian-American band Dengue Fever, which pays tribute to the 1960-70’s Cambodian rock styles of some of the artists that disappeared during the Pol Pot led Khmer Rouge regime.
Written by American playwright Lauren Yee, the scenes shift backward and forward in time to tell the story of how a father shares his trauma of survivorship of the Pol Pot regime genocide in Cambodia with his American-raised daughter. Set in 2008, Chum returned to Cambodia to persuade his daughter, Neary, to return home and to law school in the USA. But she is now working for an NGO and gathering evidence to prosecute a notorious Khmer Rouge Prison leader, Duch, for crimes against humanity.
It seems simple enough, right? But this show opens with cast members playing fictional Cambodian rock band The Cyclos, blending traditional Cambodian chants with California-style psychedelic surf rock. This sets the stage for recognizing the mid-70s thriving pop-rock music scene in Phnom Penh. Then, the narrator character comes out to speak to the audience with his nonchalant, quirky “I know more than you know” attitude.
Chum is a Cambodian-American immigrant who came to America for a new life after being in refugee camps. He wants the best for his daughter and tries to encourage her to follow her plans for law school. But Neary has just discovered that at Prison S21, which the Vietnamese Army liberated in 1979, only to find seven surviving prisoners, there had been an 8th survivor, and won’t be dissuaded. She challenges her father, “Why haven’t you told me any of this? I feel like a stupid American,” about his time and family in Cambodia.
His reply, “Better a stupid American, than a sad Cambodian.”
Raugi Yu plays Chum, who makes self-deprecating jokes to hide his real emotions. His daughter runs away after their argument, and this father-daughter conflict sets the stage for the next scenes, where he tries to reach out to her via phone messages as he shares his story as an act of reconciliation. He is an accomplished actor who can tell his Dad jokes while hinting at the underlying trauma and tragedies that are revealed later in the play.
The scene changes back to 1975, and a group of musician friends are recording their first album. Kimberly-Ann Troung, who plays Neary, also plays Sothea, the lead singer of this Cambodian Rock Band. She balances the stressed-out Neary with a flirtatious Sothea, based on real-life famous Cambodian rock singer Ros Serey Sothea, who disappeared in 1977 (accounts of her death are attributed to execution, overwork at an agricultural camp, or malnutrition in a hospital.) Troung is a powerhouse singer, commanding the audience
Duch was the real-life Khmer prison commander of S21 who oversaw the torture and killing of thousands of Cambodians for the sin of being artists, intellectuals, and teachers – not dissimilar but much more extreme to Mao’s Cultural Revolution in nearby China. In this fictional characterization, played brilliantly by Nicco Lorenzo Garcia, he is the engaging narrator who chides, goads, teases, and challenges the audience with what is Truth and questions his Conscience and role in this horrific nightmare state of human history, or does he?
Rounding out the cast is Jun Kung playing the character Rom, the drummer in the band, and Kayla Sakura Charchuk as keyboardist Pou and S-21 guard. They look like they are enjoying the music, smiling and performing for the audience. Combined with Raugi on his groovy bass, Jay on his sizzling guitar, and Kimberly-Ann singing enchanting vocals. You almost wish you could be part of this band.
The second act takes a dramatic turn to the dark side. It is now a few years after the fall of Phenom Pehn to the Khmer Rouge, and their campaign for a Utopian society is well underway. Actor Jay Leonard Juatco, who had dazzled the audience with his rock star singing as guitarist extraordinaire Leng, is now a head prison guard interrogating the recently captured Chum. Are they friends still, or are they enemies? The path is hidden but more apparent when Duch takes a special interest in the “banana seller” prisoner.
This play was fun to watch. The music performance intervals appear to express the emotions of the characters and the story, particularly when Neary is singing through her anger and frustration at her father, weaving with a drink in her hand, constantly refilled by Duch, as his character wanders in and out of music scenes like a ghostly metaphor of a hidden understory.
The Arts Club has done a good job reaching into the Pan-Asian-Canadian community to fill the cast, technical crews, and artistic team. Director Jivesh Parasram and Music Director Mary Ancheta have created a blend of joy, anger, hope, and sadness in drama, comedy, and song. The Assistant Director is Johnny D. Trinh, current interim executive director at Historic Joy Kogawa House and executive director for Vancouver Poetry House.
On the Sunday afternoon during preview week, I attended a Solidarity Feast, organized by the Arts Club Theatre Company, with invited community elders and artists, with Cambodian food provided by Angkor Harves, followed by a matinee show. I attended again on the official opening night, seeing many more of Vancouver’s local theatre community members.
Seeing this show twice allowed me to see the craft and thought of the writing, the foreshadowing and hints of this multi-layered story. I even cried at the Opening Night performance as I listened a second time to Chum’s monologue about not wanting to let his young daughter go to a baseball stadium washroom by herself, because he was “afraid” of “losing people.” It emphasized to me the long-lasting effects of trauma. And made too real, the news stories of the War in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, the discovery of unmarked graves at Residential Schools, and the incarceration of refugee immigrants in the USA.
This play has made me think about my 1980 travels through Asia when I was 20. I visited Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan. I specifically avoided Communist China, Thailand and Vietnam. Cambodia wasn’t even on the radar. It’s challenging to think that while Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan were emerging as economic powerhouses, at that time, Vietnam and Cambodia were just recovering from terrible civil wars. Now, my friends are visiting these countries as popular tourist attractions. Even former prison S-21 in Cambodia has become a tourist destination as a historical reminder of the Khmer Rouge genocide. In Canada, we have former Residential Schools and Japanese-Canadian Internment sites as historical sites and museums.
I started reviewing theatre in Vancouver in the 1980s when I wrote for my college newspaper. Most theatre in Vancouver was still very traditional and mainstream at the time. I enjoyed going to the Firehall Arts Centre to see ground-breaking Asian-Canadian theatre and actors, such as Rick Shiomi’s “Yellow Fever” and Rosie’s Cafe, and Marty Chan’s “Mom, Dad, I’m Living With a White Girl.” Back then, actor Donna Yamamoto won the Jessie Award for “Most Promising Newcomer” in an Arts Club production, but there were few significant roles following. Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre appeared on the scene created by Joyce Lam, who put on regular theatrical events for VACT , starting with Asian Comedy Nights and later putting on Rogers & Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song.” Donna took over as VACT’s Artistic Director and produced Empire of the Sun, written and performed by Tetsuro Shigematsu, whom I bumped into on the opening night of Cambodian Rock Band.
It’s great to see the evolution of Asian Canadian theatre and actors in Vancouver. Roles like these don’t come around much for Asian ethnic actors, but they are happening more frequently now. It is also lovely to see the colour-blind casting by many local theatre companies like Arts Club, Gateway Theatre, and Firehall Arts Centre. Over the past decade, I have seen a South Asian “Maria” in Arts Club’s Sound of Music and a Chinese-Scottish actor play the Gene Kelly role in Gateway’s Brigadoon.
In 2016, Lauren Yee’s play King of the Yee was produced at Gateway Theatre in Richmond with actor Raugi Yu. I’ve seen Raugi in several roles, including Anosh Arani’s Men in White at the Arts Club in 2017. It’s great to see actors mature in their craft since I first saw him in The King & I, in Theatre Under the Stars, about 20 years ago.
Two years ago, the Arts Club premiered “Forgiveness” (now playing at the National Arts Centre), a play based on Mark Sakamoto’s memoir of his grandparents’ experiences of surviving the Japanese-Canadian Internment camps and as a Canadian soldier in the Japanese Prison of War camps after the fall of Hong Kong. These are important stories to tell and present, as is the Cambodian Rock Band. I will see this show again, as I saw Forgiveness at the start and end of its run.
