\t\t\t\t\t\t[aesop_gallery pslightbox=”on” transition=”crossfade” caption=”Photos by Martha Holmes” galleryType=”grid” id=”1016″]\n
\u201cALIENATION AND DESPAIR IN THE ASIAN GHETTO\u2026.Randall Kim, one of the most talented and skilled young Asian actors in the business today, brings strength, vitality, and pathos to the role of Fred, a bitter forty-year-old Chinatown tour guide. Fred has abandoned his life-long dream of becoming a famous writer in order to look after his family in Chinatown. If the choice is selfless, it is equally self-destructive. His life is an endless carnival of Chinatown tours\u2026But underneath the gibes, the clowning, the crude cynicism, is a deeply tormented and frustrated human being\u2026.\u201d
\u2013Genny Lim, EAST\/WEST (6\/5\/1974)<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019YEAR OF THE DRAGON IS NEW FRANK CHIN PLAY\u2026.We have a great deal of theater in black and white but not too much in yellow\u2026. \t\t\t\t \u2026the performances were excellent. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t Randy Kim (who according to the program is now styling himself Randall Duk Kim) is an excellent actor with a quite individual tautness to his performances. He here conveys a peculiar but endearing mixture of toughness and vulnerability ringed round with cynicism\u2026.\u201d
\u2013Clive Barnes, NEW YORK TIMES (6\/3\/1974)<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019YEAR OF THE DRAGON\u2019 OBTUSE FAMILY DRAMA\u2026.The actor Randy Kim, now going under the name Randall (Duk) Kim, is rapidly developing into one of our most resourceful players. But all the efforts of this small, wiry man with the big voice can\u2019t lend more than a flickering interest to a discursive and ill-made play\u2026.\u201d
\u2013Douglas Watt, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS (6\/3\/1974)<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON\u2019 OFFERS CHINATOWN FARE\u2026.And the cast is a knock-out. Keep an eye especially on Randall Kim. You\u2019ll be hearing a lot from him. He plays the tour-manager, the \u2018No. 1 son\u2019 who acts as family lifeguard despite some scathing contempt from his father. Aside from being a very funny man\u2026Kim has a sharp understanding of his character. He finds the role beneath the role, the oppressor within the victim\u2026.\u201d
\u2013Edmund Newton, NEW YORK POST (6\/3\/1974)<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cPLAY HAS FORCE AND TOUCHING BEAUTY\u2026.The problem is that Number One son in Frank Chin\u2019s fascinating drama about a Chinatown family, \u2018The Year of the Dragon\u2019 at the American Place Theatre, hasn\u2019t had very many jolly times at all. Fred, the old man\u2019s heir, played with such force and beauty by Randall \u2018Duk\u2019 Kim,\u2026is the prisoner of his family,\u2026.One of the greatest assets of the evening is Randall \u2018Duk\u2019 Kim\u2019s brilliant performance as the cocky Chinatown guide who\u2019s bleeding inside with hurt, hatred and confusion\u2026.\u201d
\u2013William A. Raidy, LONG ISLAND PRESS (6\/3\/1974)<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019DRAGON\u2019 FEROCIOUSLY FUNNY\u2026.Chin writes in a poetic free-form manner\u2026. His hero hates the Establishment with a fierce passion, and he rails at what he considers its sick racism against Orientals\u2026.His speeches constitute one loud scream at the insensitivity of white Americans\u2026. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t The cast is brilliant. The performers are mostly Asian-Americans. Randall Kim as the hero offers one of the towering performances of this or any season. He etches an intense portrait of a Chinese-American undergoing an identity crisis\u2026.\u201d -Emory Lewis, BERGEN RECORD (6\/3\/1974)<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cFIGHTING FAMILY DRAGONS\u2026.Kim has composed a performance better than what the playwright has given him, full fervency and humor and high, acerb irony, all brought off with a rather breathtaking technical ease, not a line or prop or gesture wasted, nothing given less than its due, and yet nothing made overdone or showy\u2026.In his moments of self-mockery, Kim\u2019s face takes on, not inappropriately, the creases and the jagged grin of Jason Robard\u2019s Hickey. It\u2019s his play\u2026.and Kim\u2019s performance cuts through all the hesitancies with ease.\u201d \u201cTHE THEATER MEANS TRANSFORMATION\u2026.Frank Chin\u2019s \u2018The Year of the Dragon\u2019\u2026is a play about the angry, anguished, forever frustrated efforts of a 40-year-old man to break free of the cocoon that binds him tight\u2026.an American rather than the Oriental he was born\u2026He is a sad, funny, savagely mocking prisoners as Randall \u2018Duk\u2019 Kim plays him, faking a sing-song accent\u2026half-laughing, half-crying as he watches a family destroy itself by clinging to two cultures without really living inside either. Mr. Kim is a superb actor, as regular patrons of the American Place well know. \u201cSWEET AND SOUR\u2026.Chin\u2019s new play again pivots about a character largely himself, here called Fred Eng \u2026A gifted writer and electric sensibility,\u2026Under Russell Treyz\u2019s direction the cast at the American Place Theater is strong, especially Conrad Yama as the father, the epitome of impossible autocratic love; and the extraordinary Randall Kim, who plays Fred like a trapped animal, prowling and hissing in the cage of his confined identity.\u201d \u201cREUNION\u2026.\u2018The Chickencoop Chinaman,\u2019\u2026launched\u2026that magnetic marvel Randy Kim, as a potential star,\u2026As for Mr. Kim, he is\u2026unpacking his soul in one blistering, sarcastic monologue after another, flinging every clich\u00e9 about the Chinese into the face of the audience, and boiling over with rage and love and temperament. Mr. Kim makes the play into a vehicle for Fred every time he opens his mouth\u2014but then, earlier this season, he even made \u2018The Tempest\u2019 into a (sporadic) vehicle for Trinculo\u2026.\u201d [aesop_gallery pslightbox=”on” transition=”crossfade” caption=”Photos by Martha Holmes” galleryType=”grid” id=”1016″] Review Excerpts \u201cALIENATION AND DESPAIR IN THE ASIAN GHETTO\u2026.Randall Kim, one of the most talented and skilled young Asian actors in the business today, brings strength, vitality, and pathos to the role of Fred, a bitter forty-year-old Chinatown tour guide. Fred has abandoned his life-long dream […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":268,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-performances"],"metadata":{"_wp_old_date":["2021-12-03"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\u2013Michael Feingold, VILLAGE VOICE (6\/6\/1974)<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2013Walter Kerr, NEW YORK TIMES (6\/9\/1974)<\/b><\/p>\n
-Jack Kroll, NEWSWEEK (6\/10\/1974)<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u2013Edith Oliver, NEW YORKER MAGAZINE (6\/10\/1974)<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"