Silin Chen
Now Yale Cabaret show is "a moving meditation on grief, language, and how to navigate the disasters that befall us."
Grandmother/Bathtub
Yale Cabaret
Through Saturday night
“It’s the safest place to be!” Grandmother declares of the bathtub, where she has been for an indeterminate amount of time. Neither I nor Nat, her grandchild, can convincingly source or verify her claim. Regardless, it’s as good a place as any for the two of them to grieve the catastrophes of the past and steel themselves for the catastrophes of the future in this world premiere of Brian Dang’s play, part of the Yale Cabaret’s 57th season.
Memory, time, and reality are extremely slippery in Grandmother/Bathtub. As Grandmother (Nancy Yao) and Nat (Christopher Thomas Pow) continue to encounter each other in the bathroom in hopes of understanding each other both linguistically and emotionally, it becomes clear that the events of the play aren’t exactly happening chronologically. Furthermore, both characters struggle with recollection at times.
Dang’s chosen structure adds enticing layers of mystery and misunderstanding to Nat’s quest to learn the truth about what happened to their father, and Grandmother’s quest to be fully prepared for “the big one,” a forthcoming earthquake/tsunami/volcanic eruption, the epicenter of which is destined to be her home. While the resolution of these mysteries is a slow burn, Micah Ohno’s costume design provides some crucial anchors along the way to keep audiences from going too far adrift in the sea of family history.
Under Sarah Machiko Haber’s direction, the play initially feels like a nice, warm bubble bath. Sweet smelling, light, and comforting, it eases audiences in to the brightest and most humorous aspects of Grandmother and Nat’s relationship, and to the absurdity of the former’s seemingly eternal tenure in the bathtub. Yao and Pow earn lots of laughs in the play’s opening scenes. Over time, the bubbles and sweetness go away, until you are submerging audiences in the colder, murkier, less comfortable reality of Grandmother’s situation, and her checkered past of caretaking and care-needing with Nat. Then a powerful vortex drains and cleanses the play, leaving behind something that’s a bit easier to see and understand as true and real.
The cast navigates these transitions well. Yao initially brings an adorable shamelessness to the role of Grandmother, before gradually showing just how much fear and guilt has seeped into the heart of the character. At first, Pow seems very reserved onstage as Nat, but it later becomes clear that the character had good reason to be so restrained, and even better reason to ultimately unleash the bottled-up tempest of feelings they had been keeping inside for so long. Emotional range all around.
Even within the more limited venue of the Cabaret, there are impactful feats of design in the production. Beyond the spacious, titular bathtub, Silin Chen’s scenic design also includes a creative solution to a tiled bathroom wall, and perhaps something more than a tiled bathroom wall. Theo Sung’s lighting design and Ein Kim’s projections design offer versatile framing and shadows to what would otherwise be a static single interior set. Emilee Biles’ sound design effectively signals the oncoming calamity without spoiling exactly what it is meant to be.
Overall, Grandmother/Bathtub is a moving meditation on grief, language, and how to navigate the disasters that befall us. The bathtub might not be everyone’s answer, but the play certainly inspires the question of where, exactly, is the safest place to be.
Grandmother/Bathtub runs through Saturday night (Feb. 1); tickets are available here.