Reviews
Bondage
by David Henry Hwang
Politically Correct Theatre
Seattle, 12/93

"Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang continues to make bold twists with his new romantic comedy Bondage, which makes its West Coast premiere at Theater Off Jackson, Wednesday, Nov. 24.

"As the title suggests, Bondage takes place in a modern-day S&M parlor. Clad in leather, masks and chains, a male customer and a dominatrix meet for their regular session. It has been an ongoing game for both of them, one which involves playing up ethnic stereotypes- sometimes comically, sometimes painfully.

"Director Cyndie Matsel says that the masks and sado-masochism setting symbolizes psychological bonds people put on themselves in everyday life, while wearing business suits or jeans.

"'The S&M parlor is really a metaphor of our own minds," she said. "It represents the bonds we put on ourselves, and that's what holds us back from really connecting with other people.'...

"The two actors, whose real identities are being withheld to maintain the mystery, go back and forth, putting on and taking off racial masks at will while they keep their faces hidden behind black hoods. He is a white liberal, she is a black activist. He is an Asian American man, she is an Asian American woman.

CARINA A. DEL ROSARIO, International Examiner

"The program for David Henry Hwang's play called the piece a romantic comedy for the '9Os, whips and chains optional. Indeed, in a darkly intimate way, it is a romantic comedy. There is the crackle of expectation between the man and woman dressed head to toe in latex, so that we don't know their true identities until the very end of the play, and there is a kind of friendly quality to their role playing games. Some of what happens on the stage is quite funny, though kind of painful too. You know, an average relationship.

"Mark and Terri, the man and woman, respectively, have obviously had a long term S&M relationship as client and dominatrix, but on this day, something is different. The game of using different ethnicities to humiliate her client seems not to be working for Terri, and the boundaries between who is the dominant and who the submissive keeps getting blurred. She is clearly bored with this game and something is about to change...

"We are aware this is defense, not security working here. She, like he, is trying to keep up the mask, but it keeps failing and they keep betraying real truths about who they are, who is inside the latex...

"It is a piece that proves erotica does first start with the intellect and progress from there. What isn't seen, what is held back becomes the titillation for the audience. What we imagine will happen, what could come next after the lights go down on the final scene provides the sexual tension in this piece. The authenticity of the set, with its dark corners where anything could happen and the way Terri could use that whip if she just would, are worth the price of the seat."

Rajkhet Dirzhud Rashid, Seattle Gay News

"Bondage at the Politically Correct Theatre Off Jackson is a one-act that David Henry Hwang turned out between writing, adapting and doctoring screenplays for Hollywood's top brass. As you notice the S&M parlor set, the requisite props, and that the actors' names are withheld from the program, you might think you're in for some "real" bondage. Once the play's self-consciously thick strain of un-PC racial-speak begins, and find the physical torture is by and large pantomimed, you realize you're in the presence of Metaphor...The actors' freedom to play within a play can be exhilirating to watch...Because Hwang mostly chooses his grand insidious theme over his contrived but compelling situational one, Bondage is an R-rated civics lesson."

D.H. The Stranger

"Hurt me, hurt me, hurt me. Normally you wouldn't be saying that, but Iet's face it, love hurts. And when race becomes a factor, with injurious stereotypes heaped on each party, the pain can be like... Iike what? The crack of a dominatrix's whip, perhaps?

"Politically Correct Theater invites all would be masochists, i.e. anyone who has ever loved, to David Henry Hwang's production of Bondage, now playing at the Theatre Off Jackson in the International District. Cyndie Mastel directs.

"Hwang does it again, an exploration of race, love and politics in the weirdest possible contortions. In his play M. Butterfly, it was a white French diplomat enraptured by a Chinese male tranvestite posing as a women. In Bondage, Mark (Ariel),an Asian American man, frequents an S & M (Sado-Masochism) parlor on the edge of Los Angeles, to experience the degradation and pain of romance, literally.

"Theatre-goers may find the underground torture chamber aesthetic of the S & M parlor hard to take at times, almost distracting the audience from the dialogue. The leather outfits, the set's darkness and instruments of torture envelop the audience in claustrophobic cruelty. On the other hand, when it comes to the self-debasing mind games possible in interracial attraction, the metaphor of the S & M parlor seems apt.

"Mistress Terri (Jon) caters to Mark's masochistic desires, by conceiving scenarios for personal and spiritual humiliation. For today's session, it's interracial attraction, such as a Chinese man infatuated with a white, blonde woman. She labels him an engineering nerd worshipping her from behind horn rimmed glasses, yet afraid to approach her out of typical Asian male passivity. Then, a Viet Cong, then a wimpy Chinese Mafia gangster.

'"Why don't you come right out and try to pick me up... or aren't you man enough?" taunts Terri.

"Humiliation not confined to Asian men only, they switch roles; he is a white male liberal, she an African American woman mistrustful of his attraction.

"However, the worst humilations seem to be saved for the Asian male attracted to the Asian American female. After warning him not to get his hopes up, just because they are the only Asians in the office, she tells him, "I'm generally not attracted to Asian men. I don't have anything against them personally, I just don't date them as a species."

"When Mark asks why Asian women aren't as supportive of Asian men as an African woman might be of her hrothers, Terri replies;"Well, her brothers are probably cuter than mine."

"The repartees are sharp, almost comedic, but underscore the uncomfortable. Anyone who has ever felt futile attraction across a racial boundary, has heard the same lines, felt the same assumptions, and the pain. They've been to this S & M parlor in their mind, and eaten this dirt before. And the most frightening thing is that they may have learned to like it.

"The all-leather outfits that conceal the actors' faces and bodies work to Hwang's idea that race is a "symbol, literally skin deep," a mask that one wears to protect oneself. Hiding behind race and stereotype of self and other, one is always safe. And loneliness seems a fair price to pay.

"Within the stereotypes of interracial role playing, one is never hurt even in rejection, because that's what the role sare. It is a win-win situation to begin with.

"When blonde Terri tells Mark she's grateful for Asian Mark's physics tutorials, but could never feel love for him, Mark blurts back, "It doesn't hurt me you don't love me... I never said I loved you either."

"He would have liked it, but never expected her to love him. It's the game. And in this game he too doesn't have to traverse the racial boundary with the only true act of human recognition, love.

"True courage comes when one can look past the mask, to see and embrace the person behind. And as Terri and Mark explore each stereotype andprejudice, they struggle to remove the masks alternately exposing their real vulnerabilities, that which makes them real and human.

"And maybe two hearts can come together, regardless of race, even in an S & M parlor. As the play says, "Who knows? Anything is possible. This is the 1990's."

"Take a dive into the weird, and confront the pain of race hood and love. See "Bondage," and break the chaim of prejudice and mistrust.

Northwest Asian Weekly

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