Lloyd Suh's latest play, The Children of Vonderly, produced by Ma-Yi, is a story about an unusual Midwestern family of disabled people of all kinds of background who were adopted by the Jewish couple the Vonderlys, and what happens when the patriarch of the family dies. Well, what happens is, the widowed mom goes batty, the mentally impaired "kids" are left to fend for themselves while the physically impaired (but lucid) siblings fall in love with each other and run away -- or at least try to. The children of the Vonderly household are no longer children, really, so the play is really about their struggle for independence and their pursuit of happiness. It's a theatrically conventional play, but very well-acted all around. But I can't help feeling like the metaphor of the play was somehow being obscured by all the good acting, uber-realistic speech patterns, and set changes executed by stagehands in black. I mean, this play isn't really about disabled people and their struggle for independent lives, is it? It seems like if that were the point, the play should have been cast with actors who were actually disabled -- all actors were decidedly NOT disabled (as evidenced by their quick transitions in blackouts) except for Stephen Jutras who is a dwarf. Towards the end of the play, the writer (and the protagonist) seemed more interested swimming in the slick banter than actual catharsis or change.
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