Review: A Song For Tomorrow (SummerWorks)

(photo credit: Gein Wong)

Unhappiness
by Zoë Erwin-Longstaff

An old man, Ping, is lying prostrate on a threadbare carpet, moaning softly, legs akimbo, cane just out of reach.  His wife, May, enters shortly thereafter.   With heavy steps she moves around the sparse basement apartment.  We wait expectantly for her to help him up: “Make an effort, do it on your own,” she finally exhorts.  Such is the tableau of immigrant defeat and despair that confronts us at the opening of A Song for Tomorrow. 

Soon enough the characters are literally pulled backward out of the set to a slightly earlier episode of their lives.  This will happen repeatedly as we move backward in time, eventually coming to the hopeful beginning of their relationship. It’s a familiar theatrical device to use reverse chronology in the unfolding of a story, but in this case it really works.  As we are drawn more completely into the intimate dimensions of their relationship, May’s initial callousness becomes more understandable.  The pathos of Ping’s addiction to Lotto 649, Wintario and “Wheel of Fortune” is handled especially well, as he vows repeatedly that this is absolutely his last and final time playing.  May, for her part, performs her religious devotions with increasing animation as she gets younger.  Though this is less captivating— indeed, it’s an example of where the show's repetitions don’t work– Jasmine Chen manages May’s step-by-step transition from a defeated old woman to a fresh-faced young bride with consummate grace.    

Especially innovative is the projections of Spadina Avenue and Chinatown streetscapes thrown onto the back wall of their apartment.  Likewise, the lighting and set effectively evoke the claustrophobia of May and Ping’s lives together.  What is missing however, is the reason that May sticks it out.  As Christina Wong says in her Playwright’s Notes: this was a play born out of a child’s casual exposure to forty years of parental unhappiness.  Her absence from the narrative is felt.

A Song For Tomorrow is at SummerWorks