STAGE REVIEW : ‘GAMBLING DEN’: A CLASH OF CULTURES

A winsome but evocative touch opens “The Gambling Den,” premiering at East West Players.

A braided, American-born Japanese girl is quietly dancing to swing music in her parents’ small-town cafe. Mom’s preparing sushi, dad’s in the (unseen) back room running an illegal gambling den for the local Nisei.

Between the struggling Issei (native-born Japanese) parents and the assimilated teen-ager lies a cultural and generational gap made audible by sassy radio dance music.

And that’s before an older daughter determines to marry a man of her choice, against her parents’ best-laid plans for matrimony with the son of rich Issei landowners.

“What’s love have to do with marry?” barks the girl’s father.

These moments set in motion Akemi Kikumura’s largely autobiographical drama of a not-untypical Japanese-American family in pre-World War II California.

American racism is an implicit theme, the more dramatic for its understatement. (As a child here at the time, I took it for granted--and was conditioned to observe--that all Japanese male adults were gardeners.) But more revealing to theatergoers is the nasty prejudice dramatized within the Japanese subculture. The specter of Pearl Harbor and the internment camps hovers over the action.

East West artistic director Mako both directs and plays the tenacious family patriarch. Co-featured as the stage family is Mako’s own real-life family (wife Shizuko Hoshi and their two daughters, Mimosa Iwamatsu and younger sister Sala Iwamatsu).

This is nepotism at its best, because it happens to be good casting. Mako and Hoshi are terrific in roles that transcend cultural definition as the traditional but hustling husband battles the appalled wife, who ultimately displays more strength than imagined.

The daughters, East West veterans, are convincing but need more shading--the older sister is too dour and the younger girl almost too much of a mugger, but it is a vivid contrast. (If you have 14- and 19-year-old daughters in your house, you’ll say it’s only reality, but theater has to be more artful than reality.)

Strong support is delivered by Pat Li as an abrasive, flashy sporting lady, Nelson Mashita as an ambitious but decent suitor and Momo Yashima and Tad Horino in a wonderful portrayal of an older, land-rich Issei couple who come bearing ceremonial gifts with their smitten son (Yosh Moriwaki). Horino comes close to stealing the show in a brief, hilarious scene mixing touches of senility with uncanny charm.

Technical credits--Christopher Komuro’s weathered cafe set, Rae Creevey’s yellowish lighting and Pikke Allen’s costumes--complement the proceedings.

Performances at 4424 Santa Monica Blvd. run Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 and 7:30 p.m., through Jan. 11; (213) 660-0366.