Review: Wanna Play by Christine Hoang, Color Arc Productions
by Michael Meigs

Okay, an admission from a linguist and literary tanslator: I lack the context and historical references to identify precisely the primitive but extremely fetile ground from which Christine Hoang's Wanna Play? springs. Her meditation opens with the projection onto the Hyde Park Theatre's blank back wall of lumbering, crudely depicted adversaries in combat. Their snarling challenges to one another pop up in boxy speech bubbles before we hear the blurry voices. In video game world, this is a retro-retro PvP style of  pixillated 8-bit images like those of a PlayStation1 from the 1980's. 

 

See how many irrelevancies I brought back from my plunge down the rabbit hole of online research? During that era my family and I were living in the eastern Mediterranean  and sub-Saharan Africa, and my major preoccupations were international diplomacy and raising blessedly videogameless children. That makes little difference, however, for Christine's focus isn't on technology but instead on anomie, anonymity, and the the difficult and sometimes painful process of making friends.

 

That's an urgent contemporary concern, at least to judge from the fact that for me this is the third theatre review in a row with similar themes. Both Bottle Alley's Self Portaits 5 and KJ Sanchez's Walden [remixed] featured preoccupations with social connection. Perhaps It's the paradox of loneiness in a society hypnotized by "social" media; perhaps this is me and the magic distorting mirror of theatre that reflects our own concerns back to us.

 

 

 

Our guide to Hoang's imaginary world-within-a-world is the vivacious, welcoming, mirror-spangled presence who calls herself Cappy. Michele Alexander both sparkles and twinkles; if you were to wish for a Virgil to conduct you through the unknowns of an alt life, you couldn't find a more appropriate companion.

 

In a variant of GG WP (Good Game, Well Played!), the game invites its players to the next level. When they accept, they materialize onstage before us. Not as the lithe, confident freestyle combatant and the hulking green monster but as Gemma, a short woman with Asian features (Hoang herself) and Ethan, a tallish American male from the southern United States (Travis Owens). Stripped of video disguises, they're understandably confused. Cappy cheerfully explains that in this new place, the HERE, they're required to undertake a series of chalenges (cooperative, not PvP). Gemma and Ethan don't much like that idea. Cappy sweetly informs them that they have no choice; in order to return to their familiar worlds or even to receive food and drink, they must accumulate points by resolving challenges.

 

 

Alternatives? None. This is a place of no exit. Without a hundred points on the scoreboard, they will eventually die in the HERE. That prospect panics, then motivates. Through a series of game challenges, the very dissimilar players engage with the structure and with one another. The apparently simple activities (movements on a chessboard, answering questions to earn marbles) are subtly designed to force the players to face their carefully hidden traumas and collaborate despite differences of background and of psychology. Activities, obstacles, and unexpected penalties oblige them gradually to share those pasts and traumas. Total strangers become linked despite their entirely different histories.

 

Hoang is feisty, brainy, somewhat alienated, and reluctant to share. Ethan is milder and shows a puppy-dog enthusiasm, but we learn that his own hurts, though different, are no less real to him. He strums a ukelele and sings a couple of simple but clever songs (credited to Tyler Mabry and Johann Solo). The players arrive at the mutual respect and acceptance of teammates. 

 

We in the audience are inevitably caught up in the arithmetic of points gained and lost. When the goal is achieved at last, Gemma and Ethan must choose whether to remain in the undefined existence of the HERE or return to their former realities. That's a puzzler for them, and that's the moment  Hoang the playwright pulls the rug from beneath the premise of the script. It's a lovely switch, one that evokes amazement and participatory laughter from the thoroughly invested audience . The surprise encapsulates her message and delivers it with aplomb.

 

Gemma and Ethan's decision creates a RESET that brings us to a new HERE and offers previously unimagined opportunities.

 

The playwright leaves the moral of the story tactfully unexpressed: both the HERE and the here (and now) pose the same conundrum. What are we unique, often lonely individuals to do to counter trauma and isolation? Hoang's impishly cheerful story is fun and funny. Her characters are avatars who face the puzzles each of us must confront in the span of time granted to us.

---

Wanna Play
by Christine Hoang
Color Arc Productions

April 4-19, 2025

Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.

Talkbacks April 6 and April 13; ASL-interpreted show April 13; Industry Night April 16. 

Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St, Austin

TIX: $20-30 HERE or via colorarcproductions.com.

ACCESSIBILITY:

ASL Interpreters. If you are a deaf attendee, please email colorarcproductions@gmail.com in advance so we can reserve you free seats in the front for our ASL Interpreted Night on Friday, April 11, 2025.

Seating & Viewing. The venue offers seating in the front row for patrons who use wheelchairs and other mobility devices, are visually impaired, or could otherwise benefit. Seating is general admission, so we recommend emailing colorarcproductions@gmail.com in advance so that we can ensure your needs are met.