Playwright: Keith Uchima
At: Due East Theatre Company at Stage Left, 3408 N. Sheffield Ave.
Phone: 齅) 353-5979; $18
Runs through: July 10
'We got us a regular United Nations right here at Clark and Huron!' declares mob boss Victor 'S', and in 1951, his assessment would have been accurate. If drugs, sex or wagering was your goal, it didn't matter the color of your skin (not much, anyway) so long as your money was green and plentiful. And if you lived in this district, and weren't just looking for fun, you were probably Japanese and you were probably broke. Wartime internment had left millions of West Coast Japanese-American citizens crippled by bankruptcy and prejudice, forcing them to emigrate inland.
Keith Uchima's play recounts the progress of one such pilgrim. But though his story is based in fact—federal investigations of labor union ties to organized crime was big news in the 1980s—Seven Out is not a documentary. Our hero, identified as Kent, is another in American literature's procession of good men driven by desperation to destructive deeds.
When we meet him, he's the neighborhood loan and gambling shark—a exceptionally humane one, more inclined to threaten miscreants than injure them—until his success attracts the attention of the Big Boys. He has sidekicks—the swaggering 'Lizard' and the nerdy Toshi. He has a good-as-she-can-afford-to-be girlfriend, Mia, who dreams of escape from their sordid world. He has nemeses—the envious Quentin and the ambitious Apollo. Other denizens of this universe include a white prostitute with the obligatory golden heart, a Negro executioner with his own code of honor, and a sacrificial victim who faces his doom with courage and dignity.
Comparisons to Clifford Odets' Golden Boy are inevitable, and not necessarily unfavorable. The gangster myth has always been a romantic one and its dramatic depiction steeped in melodrama to this day. Director Allen Sermonia has assembled a multiethnic cast (led by Jason Llamas and Helen Young, recently seen in Prop Thtr's Struggling Truths) who immerse themselves fearlessly in their archetypal personalities while never losing control of the extravagant emotions characteristic of their genre. After last season's anemic debut, the professionalism reflected in this Due East Theater production signals new opportunities for both the fledgling company and for under-utilized Asian artists throughout Chicago's theatre community.