Reviews
Gravity Falls From Trees, by Sung Rno
Asian American Theater Co.
6/97

"In his brief, beguiling tease of a play calledGravity Falls From Trees, Sung J. Rno sets three characters aloft in a sky-blue hospital room. For about an hour, the audience floats along with them -- albeit toward a rather unsatisfying landing -- through a tragicomic ozone...

"Nature misbehaves as director Karen Amano's sleek, efficient production gets under way. Branches and apples hang suspended in midair, then suddenly vanish. Rno, operating in a more elliptical, intellectual mode than he did in the vigorous Cleveland Raining staged by the Asian American two years ago, can be drily, surprisingly funny here...

"But the resolution, accomplished with images of suspended apples and parables, is less than satisfying....The apple finally falls, but without much dramatic effect. ``Gravity'' is finally a kind of mind-game bagatelle, expertly played...

"The ensemble, led by Park's charmingly paranoid Francis, is a tight one. Even with this spare, filmy script, all three leave us wanting more. They make the characters more intriguing than the path they travel."

Steven Winn, SF Chronicle

"SUNG J. RNO (pronounced "no" ) made a promising local debut in 1995 when his Cleveland Raining was co-produced by Thick Description and the Asian American Theater Company. Two years later, with AATC's world premiere of his Gravity Falls From Trees - at, and in association with, the Magic Theatre - Rno's promise remains palpable but oddly elusive.

"Gravity," the final show in AATC's abbreviated season, is a spare, poetic reverie - halfway between a parable and a koan - about the downing of Korean Airlines flight 007 by the Soviet Union in 1983. It's also about Isaac Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation and what it means to be Korean American. It takes place in a kind of parallel dimension, in a lightly humorous, magical blend of science, mysticism and wishful thinking. But as much as some of its elements shine, they don't cohere very well...

"Amano gives "Gravity" a grave, almost reverential, dreamy staging, punctuated with short, wordless vignettes...Her stage pictures are sharp enough to keep the play visually enticing, but the steady pace underplays the humor that adds some spice to Rno's reverie...It's not the actors' fault, though, but Rno's, that the fourth law isn't well enough developed to sound like anything more than wishful thinking. In the end, his script claims a gravity it hasn't actually earned. "

Robert Hurwitt, SF Examiner

"That mythical conk Isaac Newton got from an apple may have ushered in some of physics' greatest discoveries, but in this era of suspicious plane crashes, gravity's effects can seem a lot less inspiring. The connection between physics and other invisible forces is at the heart of Sung J. Rno's Gravity Falls from Trees...

"The play seems on the verge of taking flight...but it heads into a downward spiral as the resolution of its concrete questions gets bogged down in sloppy fantasy. Rno strains to connect...but the strands never coalesce. Lengthy climactic speeches are heavy on poetic diction and imaginative empathy, but the characters and the play get lost in the ether....

"AATC artistic director Karen Amano has staged much of Gravity with grace and imagination, showing particular flair for its fantasy elements, but as the play's specificity breaks down so does her focus and pacing. Gravity's most moving concern is Isabella's ambivalent identification with her Korean roots, her body and imagination supplanting rationality to forge more intuitive connections. While that approach may work for Isabella, Rno's play fails to make the apple fall for us; it stays suspended, in defiance of his logic, emotion, and art."

Brad Rosenstein, SF Bay Guardian

The entire texts of these reviews are available online. The Chronicle and Examiner reviews are available at www.examiner.com; use the search functions (the Chronicle review is from 6/12/97, the Examiner review from 6/6/97). The San Francisco Bay Guardian review is available at www.sfbg.com.

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