REVIEW: Slant'sSqueal Like a Pig...

"LIKE GENET HIMSELF, Slant, the Asian American performance ensemble with the retro-rock aesthetic, have a way of throwing sticks of theatrical dynamite. The title of their debut show, Big Dicks, Asian Men, a send-up of unflattering stereotypes of Asian masculinity, was like a red flare shot from the bottom of the theater listings. Squeal Like a Pig goes at it with the same gusto.

"Parodying the alienating experience of Asian immigrants in American culture, the trio dress up as Kabuki-style Martians, throw on their electric guitars, and make political satire under the promise of an unforgettable groan. The group make assimilation, othrerwise known as the art of making a living, a primary order of business. Attempts include getting a job at a BBQ restaurant, trying out for major league baseball, and securing employment as a transvestite sex worker in an s/m dungeon.

"The humor is one-note, inevitably revolving around the foreigners' deafening gibberish. The wackiness ofthe performers, however, moves this "intergalactic poperetta" buoyantly along. Misunderstood by their employers, they throw themselves into conniptions of otherness. Slant's most ticklish insight reveals that, for all their characters' total strangeness, thick-headed capitalists will hardly notice as long as the greasy chicken they're serving makes a fast buck.

CHARLES MCNULTY, the Village Voice

"You've got to love a theatre troupe that opens its show with a spaceship made of a skillet lid and aluminum foil that wobbles along a wire toward the stage...

"Sometimes the humor doesn't go anywhere....There are also weaknesses in the Promise Leapers sketch, which involves a small trampoline and the vow, "I will no longer rape the hens." But even then, at least somebody made the effort to ridicule the Promise Keepers. And if a sketch seems like one from Saturday Night Live that didn't get fleshed out by air time, it also seems like one done by the original cast.

"Slant's appeal is its members' ability to exude childlike lovability and create truly good-natured humor. The laughs come from the recognition that the world we live in is so insane that visitors from another planet might have no trouble getting jobs, diplomas, sex or lucrative product endorsement deals."

Anita Gates, NY Times

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