Provocative, thoughtful and slightly intellectually demanding, So That You May Go Beyond The Sea compellingly explores colonialism, Puccinian operatic canon and Japanese cultural roots through the story of Joey and Gabs, a loving pair co-working on a show about Madame Butterfly.
The show starts with Joey and Gabs sitting with us in the auditorium, depicting a scene where spectators are leaving the Royal Opera House after the performance of Madame Butterfly. Joey is racially insulted, referred as “chink” although he is Japanese-British. Gabs interrogates the real spectators at Camden People’s Theatre, questioning their passivity: Are you good or bad? Will you change?
While the directorial intent is thoughtful, this subplot about the role of spectators is underdeveloped, and are just forcefully called back at the end of the show.
Besides this vague subplot, the main twist unveils between Joey and Gabs, triply overshadowed by the orientalist tale of Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton, as well as the suspicious marriage between Joey’s Japanese mother Chie, a stewardess, and father Andrew, a pilot. Does he have yellow fever, fetishising Chie? Is the love story of Joey and Gabs another queer version of Madame Butterfly? Does Gabs need to defend himself, clarifying that he is not a yellow fever? Is his whiteness defined through colonialism?
With improvisational performing and real interview records from Chie, these questions are extensively examined but the answers seem elusive. They may easily fall in the realm of cultural revenge to internalise racism against White, or alternatively (and simply) return to the almightiness of love.
The set is simple but effective. On stage right, a real-time camera is shooting a scale model. Initially, it features a traditional proscenium arch with miniature figures representing the three Asian-White couples. They are all entrapped in a colonial framework symbolised by Puccini’s stage, where the narrative is always binary: the White is always the one to be blame and the Asian is always the silenced victim.
Gradually, the scale model transforms to where we are: Camden People’s Theatre, reflecting the exact stage Joey and Gabs are on. Such transformation denotes our contemporaneous reality, where the spectators are embedded with the hope and responsibility of becoming good.
So That You May Go Beyond The Sea is a neatly well-structured play, perhaps a bit too neat. It feels as though the creators are holding their notepads ticking all the boxes, not let one single Chekhov’s gun unfired. This meticulousness leaves little room for looseness and gaps for interpretation, which is actually, essential for the audience’s transformation.
So That You May Go Beyond The Sea is at Camden People’s Theatre until 4th May 2024
