Poor Yella Rednecks (2023) (Manhattan Theatre Club)

Qui Nguyen's play Poor Yella Rednecks is something of a sequel to his 2016 play Vietgone. It's independent enough that you don't have to have seen the earlier play but there is one direct reference in the dialogue, and many of the actors actually reprise their earlier roles in this play. Nguyen writes himself into this play about his mother's struggles and raising him in rural Arkansas after fleeing Vietnam as refugees. Though specific to the Vietnamese American experience, the themes will resonate with any immigrant audience. It's not exactly haha funny but there is some clever writing. Nguyen plays with the stage play as a form, writing his mother speaking Vietnamese in perfect English while writing the white characters speaking nonsense, the way his mother hears them. It's a clever inversion that works on stage where there are no subtitles. The play is actually delivered with several "songs" that are really more like slam poetry. The beats are somewhat generic, and the lyrics are kind of cheesy and don't all really rhyme, but the awkwardness is sort of endearing. I thought that it was maybe a one-off experiment, but apparently Nguyen played with this style before. It's only the closing song that has melody, the rest is pure spoken word rap, which you don't typically associate with Vietnamese refugees. The lead Maureen Sebastian is fantastic as the mother. She plays a romantic lead and a poor single mother at once and nails both tones. I also loved the set featuring the letters YELLA, the Americana signs framing the stage, and comic book style. There are two cool stage combat kung fu scenes. And the playwright as a child is played by a puppet who emotes and fights pretty realistically. I quite enjoyed the play, and would like to see Vietgone. More different Asian American stories and innovative storytelling on stage please.