The Headlands
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Cititour.com Review
What we know, what we think we know, what we’re not supposed to know – these are not only truths we deal with in our everyday lives, but the hallmarks of any good mystery story. In “The Headlands,” now being presented as part of the LCT3 series at the Claire Tow Theatre, writer Christopher Chen crafts a fairly involving whodunit (or whydunit), but the play doesn’t quite live up to its potential in exploring the effect trying to solve it has on the person who has taken on that challenge.
He’s a now-grown San Francisco man, a Google employee and self-defined amateur sleuth named Henry (Aaron Yoo), who has decided to revisit the long-unsolved murder of his father George (a superb Johnny Wu). Further, his re-interest in this so-called “cold case” comes while Henry is grieving the more recent death of his mother, Leena (played at various stages by the equally excellent Laura Kai Chen and Mia Katigbak), who made a late-in-life statement that has caused Henry to reconsider and revisit his supposedly idyllic childhood.
George – a strong-willed Chinese immigrant who eventually started his own business in order to support (and win back) Leena, the daughter of a very wealthy businessman – was supposedly killed by a burglar in their home, although he should have been at work and there was no sign of forced entry. Was it suicide? Was there an accomplice? Much of “The Headlands” feels a bit like an episode of “Dateline” or one of the many popular true crime podcasts Henry to which he and his girlfriend Jess (the excellent Mahira Kakkar) listen to religiously.
Over the show’s 90 minutes, Henry constantly re-focuses his mind, as well as visits his father’s former business partner, Walter (the ever-reliable Henry Stram), the detective who investigated the case (Stram), his mother’s bff Pat (Katigbak in an amusing cameo), and eventually the young man (Edward Chin-Lyn) who unexpectedly turned up at his childhood home shortly before the murder.
Not only does each encounter allow Henry to make some new discoveries into his parents’ complicated past, but bits of pieces of his own childhood memories flood back into his consciousness at a moment’s notice (Much of what happens – or happened – is shown to us via Ruey Horng Sun’s superb projections displayed on Kimie Nishikawa’s stark, white-walled set.) Still, Henry’s parents’ past (and by extension, George’s death) remains like a jigsaw puzzle with an important piece or two missing == until Chen pulls them, slowly but assuredly, out of the box.
The production’s larger issue, in both senses of the word, is that we’re supposed to see how revisiting his past affects Henry’s mood. The script implies that his journey is bringing out some of Henry’s long-hidden anger and angst, but Woo gives a rather bland performance (encouraged, I suspect, by director Knud Adams), robbing the play of this much-needed added dimension. Sadly, that’s the biggest crime on the stage.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
https://www.lct.org/shows/headlands/
Cast
Laura Kai Chen, Edward Chin-Lyn, Mahira Kakkar, Mia Katigbak, Henry Stram, Johnny Wu, and Aaron Yoo
Open/Close Dates
Opening 2/24/2020
Closing 3/22/2020
Theatre Info
Claire Tow Theater
150 West 65 Street
New York, NY 10023
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