Miss Minidoka, 1943
ReAct at Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center, 104 17th Ave S, 364-3283. Thurs-Sat at 8, Sun at 2; $18 general, $15 students/seniors/military/disabled, $9 children/theater artists. Through Nov 12.

REACT IS A company with a mission. Its brochure describes it as "a multi-ethnic... non-professional theater... to raise awareness and funds for local humanitarian, educational and arts charities." The company's current production of Miss Minidoka, 1943, despite spotty singing and acting, succeeds in getting its political message across.

The real Camp Mini-doka was one of several "relocation centers" in the U.S. where 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forced to live during World War II. After having been ripped away from their homes and businesses, the people forced into these camps found them immensely boring.

The first song, "Nothing to Do Blues," introduces most of the cast. Like any musical, Miss Minidoka, 1943 has a lot of stock characters: comic old wise man, fiery young romantic guy and his slightly dim sidekick, bombshell babe and her plain-Jane pals, shyster lawyer, brainy gal. The action begins when Guts (played the night I was there by a youthful John Procaccino-like Richard Sloniker, though Marc delaCruz also does this role), Skibo (Drew Dalire), and Eppie (Lealine Woolam) decide to hold a contest to determine the ideal Japanese American girl in camp. This show explores the complicated identities of what it is to be Japanese, what it is to be American, and how individuals claim such very different identity markers. For example, the bobbysoxers who read Hollywood movie magazines (director Kathy Hseih, reprising her l986 role as Takako, and Maydene Pang as Kathy) are all for anything that will mark them as more "American"; the quiet loner Chieko (Katie Tupper) would rather dance traditional Odori than compete in a crass, Yankee-inspired pageant.

The strongest performance is by Leilani Wollam as Eppie, the brainy girl who comes up with the idea of the contest; her solo, "Nisei Blues," is rousing. Some other songs are clever, particularly "Guilt Makes Me Go," but one of the vocalists the night I attended was painfully out of key. Despite some wooden acting and a few sour vocals, the production remains important as a vehicle for telling an important story from America's shameful past.