City real estate is full of ghosts. How many people lived alone and died in an apartment piled up towards the clouds? The city thrives on the illusion of possibilities, but the ghosts of suffering are approaching behind all the doors. Ask a broker rowing a murder scene that has been cleaned up with the charm of a fresh lemon scent.
When she’s about to move into the cramped studio of “Happy Life,” which opened in Walkerspace, New York on Tuesday night, she says she’s used to ghosts clinging to her shoulders. This is a handy match, as the two haunting her new bargain aren’t the type to hit at night and call it a day. They quarrel like spoiled children, remember their terrible death situation, and make impossible demands to live.
Playwright Kathy Ng imagines a world where this and the next boundary are porous but sticky, and everyone on either side wants a second chance. It’s a reasonable motive to move the character forward, but “Happy Life” doesn’t show the traditional path. Ng’s effects include horrific true crime and manga pornography, where mortality, eroticism, and Hello Kitty, even when sometimes confused, clash with vigorous contemplation of loneliness and loss.
The head ghost in charge (or HGIC as an Ng character who tends to make acronyms) was the victim of a brutal murder. Ng borrows details of the murder of a Hong Kong woman, Fan Man-yee, who was kidnapped and tortured by three men in 1999. This case is “Hello Kitty “murderClaimed as a cat mermaid and played with unlimited strength by Priyanka Arya Krishnan, HGIC has a rainbow-colored tail that hangs down on one leg and furry cat ears that stick out of the tangle of hair () The costume is by Alicia J. Austin). Her claim to the place of her deadly trials is clear, and for every reason she is in constant anger.
Another protracted soul (Sagan Chen) was hanging from the bathroom doorknob. His chest is bandaged from post-mortem upper surgery performed by his illusory co-tenant — a self-fulfilling wound that came only to death. His hopes are for potential reincarnation options (or ROs) that don’t look good and for the improbable support of a new mortal roommate (Amy Chang) who has recently divorced and is learning to live alone.
Ng’s storytelling has a playful quality that encourages easy engagement and cessation of rationality. Can ghosts control the phone sex line? Can anyone see dead people if they really try? The rules governing Ng’s theatrical side are broad and unobtrusive, allowing for a more free association of impulses and ideas. Throughout, weird sensibilities in both form and content are apparent. However, “Happy Life” forgets to maintain even its own internal logic, such as when and why a character can communicate, whether the character is alive or dead.
A film directed by Cat Yen Hearth Theater Company, Dial up instead of softening Ng’s tendency towards maximum expression. Each performance is tuned to a static frequency — a powerful and pathetic illusion, a relentlessly calm new resident — reducing the potential for more dynamic changes in personality. The gray shaded apartment, lined with plastic sheets instead of drywall and designed by Lilygerin, is properly neutral, but still hopelessly monotonous, the same as a blank slate for a new beginning. It’s a good crime scene.
“Happy Life” feels almost enthusiastic about the details of the “Hello Kitty” murder and recounts the grizzly details of the case many times. It may help arrest commentary on how women are infantile, dehumanized, and ultimately consumed by sexual and deadly obsessed cultures. However, there is an isolated quality of play that resists wider resonance beyond its defined range. I get a call from inside the studio, who is the person?
Happy life
Until August 6th in Manhattan’s Walker Space. thehearththeater.comExecution time: 2 hours 20 minutes.
