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Soul Samurai’s Fearless Lesbian Hero

In the near future, Brooklyn stands at the edge of apocalypse, wrecked by crime and decay, ruled by savage beings known as Long Tooths. Not even a subway train can penetrate the lawless landscape.

Only Dewdrop (played by Maureen Sebastian), a Filipina American, katana-wielding young lesbian, and her best friend, Cert (Paco Tolson), can kick, stab, and punch their way through the borough.

Dewdrop’s mission: to avenge the murder of her lover by killing the Long Tooths’ fearsome leader, Boss 2K.

A lone warrior, a broken world, shadowy villains, and heart-stopping fight scenes: this is the classic backdrop against which playwright Qui Nguyen creates the most unique lesbian heroine the New York indie theater scene has ever had a chance to cheer for.

His freewheeling, snap-crackle-pop play, Soul Samurai, is a modern pastiche of blaxploitation films, hip-hop swagger, and old-fashioned superhero(ine) vengeance.

Nguyen is the co-founder of the aptly named Vampire Cowboys theater Company; its mission is to bring a comic book aesthetic to the live stage. The company’s past productions have tackled sci-fi and caped crusaders, and Soul Samurai teems with the color, diversity, and biting humor those shows shared.

Samurai’s particular formula has a personal bent for Nguyen, who notes in the program that he grew up as a lone Vietnamese American kid in Arkansas:

..it woulda been easy for me to feel bad about what I looked like or where I lived. But seeing characters like Bruce Lee and Richard Roundtree on the screen made raising my head up high easy and convinced me that it wasn’t a silly idea to believe that I too could be the baddest mamma jamma in my ‘hood. It was about heroes.

With Dewdrop, Nguyen is, in a way, giving back with his beloved genre; he’s offering up a lesbian warrior to inspire queer folks.

And it’s great, geeky fun.

Few action hero or comic book tropes go untouched here; there are, of course, vampires (the Long Tooths), along with shogun crime bosses, noble senseis, inept lackeys, and wisecracking sidekicks. Title cards naming each scene are projected against the walls Kill-Bill style, and all fight scenes (choreographed by Nguyen) are colored by bass-heavy riffs or hip hop jams.

There are only five performers for the play’s nineteen characters, but director Robert Ross Parker keeps the action moving as fast as a comic-book sequence, making the small cast feel like an entire city, while costume design ably camouflages everyone with wigs, mutton chops, bell bottoms, afros, or hoodies.

Nguyen also throws in some touches of absurdity that seem just for the heck of it, too, like a puppet show with some foul-mouthed fraggles, and an odd stop-motion cartoon interlude acted out by pieces of fruit and a hammer.

Through the artfully directed chaos, Dewdrop and her girlfriend, Sally (Bonnie Sherman), are the play’s anchors.

Played with lithe, athletic grace by Maureen Sebastian, Dewdrop is shown in flashbacks to be a nerdy librarian at her college before her girlfriend’s death propels her to train as a samurai (with the obligatory training montage).

Bonnie Sherman embodies Sally – a blonde afro’d, wisecracking white gal – with handsome swagger, and her chemistry with Dewdrop has a genuine flavor.

With the couple, Nguyen doesn’t shy from solemn moments; Dewdrop and Sally treat each other with a barbed gentleness that feels real to anyone who’s ever had a crush, and their slow-dance scenes have a touching intimacy.

There’s some queer-tinged comedy, too, like the guffaw-worthy pickup lines Dewdrop’s sidekick, the neon-sneaker clad Cert (a hilarious Paco Tolson) tries out on her when he finds out she’s a lesbian. “Well, Cinderella was a bum before she got transformed by her Fairy Godmother … I do got a magic stick! HEY-O!”

Another moment may strike viewers with a grim familiarity — Dewdrop is punched in the face and called a dyke by a beefy thug.

Instead of crying, she laughs and mocks him, and when he approaches for more, she hits him in the nuts. It’s a cheap retaliation, perhaps, but a satisfying one nonetheless, and when a crime boss asks, “What color you fly?” Dewdrop has earned her cool response: “My own.”

Nguyen’s fast-paced, stylized play is, for the queer viewer, at once an escape and a wholly familiar sensation. What modern-day lesbian hasn’t felt, at some point, the pressures of a hostile society while on a personal quest for love?

That Soul Samurai doesn’t shy away from the complexity of this predicament, while wrapping it in the recognizable fun of comic action, makes it required viewing for every queer woman within driving distance of the theater. Go see it. Make it your mission.

Soul Samurai. HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10013. Wednesdays through Sundays at 8:30pm until March 15; 4pm Saturday matinees March 7 and March 14. Tickets $25; Students and seniors $20.

For tickets, visit here.org or call 212-352-3101, and visit VampireCowboys.com for more info.

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