By Janice Jann

East West Player's guest production of The Best Man disappointed -- over and over again.

The play may be about the best man, but the women are better. In the dysfunctional family drama The Best Man, the female leads, Cathy Shim and Lisa Faiman, outshine the two protagonists, Leonard Wu and Weiko Lin (who is the also the writer of the play), both in skill and memorability.

Wu and Lin play Mitchell and Danny, two brothers with an unspoken tension caused by a turbulent family history. Mitchell is about to get married, and Danny, the carefree, slacker big brother, is his best man. Despite their differences, Danny convinces Mitchell and his sophisticated fiancée, Julia (Faiman) to spend the night before their wedding partying in his super-nice hotel room with Danny and his much younger girlfriend Misty, played by Shim. Personalities clash, and secrets are revealed.

Lin wants to write his characters as three-dimensional people with multiple facades, but instead of subtly integrating the layers into the writing, the characters end up appearing schizophrenic, switching moods at unexpected times. This is especially true of Misty and Julie, unfortunate products of Lin's weak examination of the female gender. Luckily, the actresses' excellent comic timing partially make up for it, giving the audience an entertaining portrayal of women, if not a realistic one.

As the comedic relief of the story and the foil for the uptight Julia, Misty is supposed to be 18 but looks and acts more like a 14-year old girl playing dress up in her big sister's tight skinny jeans and hooker heels. At first glance, with her voice a squeaky falsetto and her hair tied up in ridiculous half-up, half-down pigtails (I mean, I never wore my hair that way, even when I was 8), there was no chance anyone was going to take Misty seriously.

But as the play progressed and more personalities were revealed, Misty became a little more of an emotionally complex character. Part way through the play, she appears calm and in control, revealing her tragic past and deriding the spoiled Julia for never having to live alone and survive on her own. However, only a few scenes later, Misty clings on to Mitchell's arms, scared that no one else was in the room. Talk about mood swings. Fortunately, Shim handles every awkward transition and line with the ease, and she garners the most laughs from the audience.

Unlike Shim, someone who failed to meet his comedic expectations was Weiko Lin's Danny. Danny's character is the goofy, ne'er-do-well older brother, constantly bumming around with no purpose in life. In the first scene with Mitchell and Danny together, Danny utters the phrase "just joking, man, just joking!" over and over again.  The problem was, his jokes weren't funny, so viewers just want to shut him up... over and over again. Lin overacts on every line and makes it difficult to differentiate between his motivations. He appears inebriated when he's supposed to be kidding, inebriated when he's supposed to be serious and calm -- I guess the one thing Lin is good at is playing inebriation. With his consistent twitching and toe-tapping, Lin made his point that Danny is an emotional wreck.

It is just too bad the play's dialogue and direction is also a wreck. Lin's lines felt forced and unrealistic. Under Kevin Lau's direction, the scenes were not paced very well, most of them lasting much longer than one would hope. As the leads alternated scenes between each other, none of the relationships seemed to have believable chemistry: Danny and Misty had an eerily Lolita-esque relationship about them, and Julia and Mitchell seemed more like mortal enemies.

As the night progresses and more drinks are poured, more and more secrets -- the types found in soap operas -- are revealed. Nearly every single difficult subject you can name -- murder, kidnaping, revenge, adultery -- is covered. These issues keep pouring out awkwardly and nonsensically from the characters' revelations, and in the end, all four lives wind up a mess. Not unlike the disaster of the entire play.

Published: Friday, May 25, 2007