STAGE REVIEW
Exiled in(side) America

'Sisters Matsumoto' explores a family wounded by internment in WWII for Japanese ethnicity

By Ed Siegel, Globe Staff, 1/7/2000

In America's internal politics, Feb. 19, 1942, is a day that will live in infamy. It was on that day, 21/2 months after Pearl Harbor, that President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, paving the way for authorities to ''detain'' 120,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps in the western United States, lest they betray the country.

Next to slavery and taking land from the Native Americans, this was the most racist act sanctioned by the federal government. No such action was taken against German-American or Italian-American citizens, but even liberals like Earl Warren, as attorney general and governor of California, went along with it. Playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, whose parents were interned, is one of a generation of Japanese-American artists who have attempted to bring the camps out of the shadows of American history and shed some light on what the experience has meant to Japanese-American identity.

To that end, Gotanda dramatizes not the horrific experiences of the camps but the immediate aftermath, when the detainees were released after World War II, in ''Sisters Matsumoto,'' which is receiving its East Coast premiere in a fine staging at the Huntington Theatre Company.

The play, though, is problematic. Gotanda dexterously guides us into the specifics of time and place and sets up the terms of the debate in such a way that we identify with each of the well-drawn characters and wonder which part of the spectrum we would have been. Gone is the patriarch, the father of the three sisters, who, in his misguided faith in America, counseled compliance with the camps and then died after being beaten up in one of them.

When the sisters return to the family farm, the oldest, Grace, is determined to put the past behind and get on with life while paying attention to ethnic traditions. Chiz, the middle sister, is an out-and-out assimilationist, while the youngest, Rose, is in a state of depression, having lost her fiance in one of the Japanese-American platoons assigned to the front as cannon fodder. Of the two husbands, one is a Japanese nationalist; the other is a jokester who, oddly enough, voices most of the play's anger at what the government did to them.

As the play progresses through the first act, ''Sisters Matsumoto'' loses much of the overly symbolic characterization, thanks in part to the talents of director Sharon Ott and of the acting ensemble, particularly Kim Miyori and Christine Toy Johnson as the two older sisters. Kate Edmunds's interior of the farmhouse captures the compassion in Gotanda's writing, and Nancy Schertler's lighting evokes changes in mood along with time of day.

But while Gotanda makes us feel the warmth within the family, he doesn't find the heat that would spark the play into much more than a recapitulation of the terms of debate. Gotanda seems to be using the play to work through his own ambivalence at a country that treated his innocent parents like pariahs and then rolled out the affirmative-action red carpet to him and other professionals in his generation. In either case, the color of his skin was paramount.

To his credit, Gotanda doesn't offer simplistic answers to define the ''right'' attitude to America or Japanese-American identity, then or now. On the other hand, ''Sisters Matsumoto'' cries for a stronger authorial voice to take control of the situation rather than dish out indomitable-spirit formulas like stick together, find common ground, and work hard.

The outright naturalism of the play seems to be new territory for Gotanda, who in past plays and interviews, eschews such plays in favor of more poetic and less realistic storytelling. Clearly, he hasn't mastered the form, as ''Sisters Matsumoto'' unfolds like ''Three Sisters'' without the poetry, or ''Awake and Sing'' without the singing (although the period music from Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller casts a wry commentary). Nor, really, is there much drama. The reconciliations are utterly predictable, as is one character's betrayal. Gotanda has put down writing for television and movies, but ''Sisters Matsumoto'' is awfully Hallmark Hall of Fame-ish.

All that said, ''Sisters Matsumoto'' does have a strong heart and doesn't wear it on its sleeve. Together with that, the acting and the production values make this a rewarding trip in American history (the program notes are superb), even if it may not prove to be a deeply memorable one.

This story ran on page C01 of the Boston Globe on 1/7/2000.