{"id":12065,"date":"2023-01-26T06:26:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T06:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/?p=12065"},"modified":"2023-01-25T23:26:27","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T23:26:27","slug":"allegiance-with-george-takei-comes-to-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/2023\/01\/26\/allegiance-with-george-takei-comes-to-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Allegiance with George Takei Comes to London"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Allegiance, playing at the Charing Cross Theatre until April 8. OHHH MYYY!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n George Takei’s very personal show about the Japanese internment camps that the United States thought were cool cool cool during WWII has come to London. I say ‘his show’ even though he didn’t write it because everyone calls it that, because it’s inspired by his life story. Our beloved Georgie was taken to the camps in California when he was mfing 5 YEARS OLD. It’s hard enough to watch adults playacting at living through this horror onstage; can you even fathom what it was like for this beloved man as a tiny boy? You cannot. So everything he brings to it — the harrowing story, the heart, the lovable performance, the magic of seeing this public persona live onstage — is wonderful, and the show is moving in large part because of all his gifts, gifts of performance and connection and the biggest one, of giving his story to the theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The show begins with an elderly Japanese man named Sam (IT’S GEORGE!) dressing in his WWII uniform to mark the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, as he does every year. A woman comes to his door with the news that his sister Kei has died, and George kinda freaks out like STOP IT, PAST, LEAVE ME ALONE, I HADN’T TALKED TO KEI IN 50 YEARS! which is, wow, REALLY sad, like that’s a really long time, that’s much longer than I’ve been alive, wtf, how could you not talk to your sister for that long, what the crap happened? Luckily the show goes awooawoowoo and turns back time to show us the story of what happened. Sam becomes mfing lovable Telly Leung all the way from the great white wayyy yes Tellayyyyy! to play Sam as the young man, forced at the prime of his life to enter the internment camps with his sister Kei, his father who he THINKS is always disappointed in him but is he really or is he just strict and not great with English?, and his grandfather (played by George now). We see the trials and tribulations, yet also the hope and light they forge in the camps with their fellow prisoners, and the love they find – including TellySam with a hawhite nurse, Hannah. STUFF GOES DOWN!<\/p>\n\n\n\n