Soul Samurai (Qui Nguyen)

As a rule I don’t comment on playwrights until I’ve experienced three of their works. Three is enough to see patterns form and to understand if they have more than one idea, if some piece they did stands out, if their voice does or doesn’t work for me. That’s how I know that even though I probably won’t like a Sarah Ruhl play, I definitely want to read all of them; that’s I know Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is one of my favorite playwrights; that’s I how know Karen Zamarkias is replacement level at best; and that’s how I know that I can’t stand Qui Nguyen.

I don’t know much about the man except what I’ve learned through the notes of his plays. His work, which I’ve been acquainted with since college, is notable for its high degree of violence, and the (maybe knowingly) 90’s street language all of his characters seem to talk in.

Presumably he was a fight choreographer before becoming a playwright since his plays break out into fights like a musical breaks into songs, and from reading the accolades of his early work the plays themselves seemed like vibrant feasts for the visually visceral: they became sensations not so much because they were good in a traditional Aristotelian sense, but because they were different in a way that gave the audience something they were missing.

I disliked him before he became ubiquitous for Vietgone and She Kills Monsters, the former enormously popular at regional theaters since 2015, and the latter practically a requirement for any high school or college to put on. And why not? She Kills Monsters is useful for the educator since it gives an opportunity to teach stage combat; it has a female focused cast, which is useful for schools where men still don’t embrace the theatrical arts; and it’s the rare play that features an ensemble so you can accommodate all the students in your charge.

I’ve read both and I find Vietgone mostly a great show plagued by the same issues of all Qui Nguyen plays, albeit in lower doses, and I think She Kills Monsters is absolutely awful and I honestly don’t know why schools insist on putting on a show that sexualizes teenage girls to that extent, that’s not why we’re here though. We’re here to talk about Soul Samurai.

And it’s useful that we are, because Soul Samurai is a perfect example, for better and for worse, of what Qui Nguyen is all about. It’s told in a stylized fashion with characters who all sound the same where we the shallow story is merely a pretext to serve you complicated fight scenes between unsurprising and unnuanced characters, until we’ve filled two hours.

In this case it’s a 70’s crime thriller pastiche with Asian theatrical influences that functions as a cross between The Warriors and Death Wish. In an alternate New York the city has fallen to crime bosses who have organized themselves like Ronin. Young college student Dewdrop fails to save her girlfriend from a gang of vampires and trains for five years to defeat all the vampires and avenge her lover.

We get that story in flashback as we follow her on the night she carries out her revenge, trying to defeat Boss 2k, the leader of the Long Tooth (Vampire) gang. It probably won’t surprise you to know that she had a sensei who was killed by a former student, or that that student is her thought to be dead girlfriend who has actually risen through the ranks to become a lieutenant of the Long Tooths. or that there is a melancholy ending, or that Dewdrop has a long-suffering romantic hopeful who makes a tragic sacrifice at the end.

The plot is formulaic, but the plot isn’t the point: the fights are, the style is, the nods to old movies Nguyen presumably grew up loving is. None of that works for me. The characters talk in a patois so affective that it boggles the mind and evens everyone out (excepting for some early scenes where Dewdrop and Sally [her girlfriend] speak in a conventional American dialect.) It’s like listening to a music genre you don’t like: it doesn’t matter how great it might be, it’s presented in a form you find off-putting, and so it can never reach you.

There are inventive elements: there’s a puppet show in the middle of it, I loved that sequence. There’s one character represented by a shadow self on stage, that was interesting, even if I feel it didn’t get a proper payoff.

Throughout this I’ve tried to avoid using the word “normal,” tried to eschew saying “If Qui Nguyen wrote normally he could do great things.” Because that isn’t right. Aaron Sorkin doesn’t write normally, Quentin Tarantino doesn’t write normal, and I don’t want my writing to be seen as normal. Qui Nguyen stylistically doesn’t work for me, in the same way the Sarah Ruhl doesn’t work for me stylistically, but when he moderates his natural impulses I see what he’s trying to do and I appreciate that. I don’t think I need him in my artistic diet though.

But we’re going to look into him more tomorrow anyway.