Review: Big Dicks, Asian Men
SLANT, 11/96

New York Times 11/20/96
Delivery Men on Tricycles
And Computer Hackers

Slant Performance Group
Pan Asian Repertory Theatre

Through Saturday, people who missed the latest show of the Slant Performance Group at its downtown home, La Mama, can catch the Pan Asian Repertory Theater's production at St. Clement's Theater at 423 West 46th Street. And at the end they will get to hear one song from a new show this engaging group is working on: a rock number called "My Girlfriend Is a Yakuza," the most wicked evocation of the culture of computer hackers I have heard yet, and the best set in the show.

The other numbers in this energetic hourlong performance - epitomized by a good-natured rendering of "Secret Asian Man," to the tune of the too-familiar theme song from a James Bond movie - tease most Americans about their inability to distinguish one Asian from another and send up images Asian-Americans have of themselves and of the rest of the world.

An episode about a doctor who increases the size of men's genitals - though performed with all the muscular balletic skill this group always displays-may strike anyone over 18 as a bit juvenile. But two routines called "Buddha Blues" and "No Menus Please" (that one done by food delivery men on tricycles) are wonderful singing satires, and a songless routine about the corpulent souls of sumo wrestlers is a merciless jab at cults of all kinds.

Slant must be incapable of dullness. This trio-Richard Ebihara, Wayland Quintero and Perry Yung -seem inhabited by a single mischievous and merry spirit. They are good, if loud, musicians; they can dance; all are acrobats if not gymnasts, and no matter how much fun they poke at other people, they laugh at themselves more than at anyone else.

D. J. R. BRUCKNER

[A&E Program Guide] [Home] [ABC Info] [E-mail]