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“Fast Company,” from Pork-Filled-Productions keeps you on your toes with a swift plot and suspicious-yet-likeable characters.
Well what a fun story! After a recent con-gone-horribly-wrong, in which a 1.5 million dollar comic book goes missing, Blue Kwan (Sara Porkalob) wrangles her brother Frankie (Kevin Lin) and mother Mabel (Mariko Kita) to team up and execute the ultimate con against her second brother, Henry (Brad Walker). With a quick and amusing plot, loaded with betrayals and a decent helping of good old-fashioned parent-child psychological issues, this production is not lacking sheer enjoyment.
I loved watching these actors. For one small thing, it’s always wonderful to walk into a Seattle production and see something other than the usual parade of quirky white people doing quirky white people stuff. Much more importantly, though, the cast of “Fast Company” is quick, funny, engaging, and believable, with excellent chemistry as a family and fingers on the pulse of what real people act like at this point in the twenty-first century.
The scenery and scene transitions executed in the tiny setting of Theatre Off Jackson are really remarkable, and honestly not to be missed. Many productions use projected backdrops combined with physical sets, but this one combines them with such deftness that it truly is a pleasure to watch each scene change unfold. There is a wonderful moment that elicited a showstopping applause in which an actor interacts with a projecting in such a seamless way (I won’t give it away, it was that brilliant) that we might almost have missed it.
Now, the script (by Carla Ching) is a little bit corny and can’t seem to make up its mind between being dramatic or funny. On the one hand, the whole thing is just too farfetched (and a smidgen too short) to be taken wholly seriously, but on the other, a lot of the content–parental neglect, is actually fairly grave. Also, there’s a lot of discussion of Game Theory, sleight of hand illusions, and the art of the Con, all of which is too passing to be properly understood by or particularly interesting to the audience, and sort of comes off as a series of in-jokes among the production team. But the characters are well-created and complex, and of course it is possible to be both fun and serious, but just a little more deftness-of-hand would have been appreciated.
Still, this show is a proper delight. Theatre Off Jackson rarely hosts shows that aren’t worth seeing. If you enjoy fun and funny acting, exciting and quick plots, and juicy family drama, this play is right up your alley.
“Fast Company” was written by Carla Ching and directed by Amy Poisson. It runs at Theatre Off Jackson (409 7th Ave S., Seattle) from November 1 to November 22. For tickets, visit Brown Paper Tickets.