Theater Review (NYC): TBA by Carla Ching

Carla Ching's new play, TBA, directed by Denyse Owens, is one of the central productions of Second Generation's celebration of its eleventh year. Of the production's fine qualities, first mention should go to it star, Lloyd Suh, an actor of remarkable talent, concentration, comic timing, and stamina.

Suh plays Silas Park, a Korean-American writer on the verge of major literary success. Obsessing over Maya (the excellent Michi Barall), the ex-girlfriend he still loves, Silas has withdrawn to his small East Village apartment and won't come out, even when solicited by Darren, an enthusiastic literary agent played by the droll Dustin Chinn, so hyperactive he constantly trips over his lines but so amusing you don't care.

Evoked effectively by Nick Francone's dusty-looking, dirty-window-laden set, Silas's humble but homey pad holds nearly all the action. This consists of Silas's interactions with Maya, with the agent, with his adoptive brother Finn (the solid J. Julian Christopher), and with Maxie, a restaurant worker who befriends the shut-in from the sidewalk below his window.

Next to Silas, Maxie is the play's most interesting character. She is played with assurance by Nedra McClyde, who I saw last year in Victor Woo. Here, rather than being asked to dance and sing, McClyde plays an intensely emotional woman with some secrets of her own. Her infiltration of Silas's rather wobbly orbit seems at first a forced plot device, but that changes.

"I don't like people, Darren," Silas tells the agent early on. "They freak me out." But much more than that - and much less - lies behind Silas's retreat into his urban version of hermithood, and it is the playwright's skill in holding things back and revealing them slowly and effectively that keeps the story, which might have been claustrophobic, flowing and tense.

Unfortunately this knack deserts her during a stretch of the second act, collapsing a chunk of the play into a flat, dry talkfest. The act could do with some cold-eyed tightening up. But a lovely final scene helps redeem it.

Article Author: Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Co-Executive Editor of Blogcritics. As a writer he contributes most often to the Culture section, where he often reviews NYC theater; he also writes a semi-regular review round-up of independent music releases. …

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