Where I Watched it: Broadway HD
English Audio Description?: No
Once again, another title by Broadway HD that lacks audio description. However, I’m not here to continue to pound that point home today, though it is so important. As i watched Oppenheimer, it had me thinking about so many things that we may or may not have done correctly,and some really effective stories told from this time period. As much as I’d love to review Grave of The Fireflies, I would love to do that with audio description, plus it’s not on any of the multitude of services I subscribe to. However, Allegiance is.
If you’ve never seen this musical, I won’t hold it against you. It didn’t have a long run, and I believe regional productions would be difficult to do if you’re not from an area with a lot of Asian American music theater actors. I don’t want to entertain the idea that somewhere in Kansas is a school full of white kids telling this story.
We live in w told that is trying to rewrite history, to teach that slavery was beneficial to black people because it taught them skills. Not to mention the perpetual existence of holocaust deniers. So what happens when all of the stories from the people who were taken from their American homes and forced into relocation camps are no longer around to give a voice to their story? Will a musical like Allegiance be enough to carry that torch?
Musical theater can be used to tell a myriad of tales, but it can also be quite effective at conveying uncomfortable subject matter to an audience in a more palatable way. It might seem odd to sing about being stripped of your property as a Japanese American and put into a camp, but shows like this, The Scottsboro Boys, Ragtime, and Parade deal with various subject matters with tragic results. Even musicals seemingly not geared toward a historical point in time still can tackle hard topics. Jagged Little Pill has a song about a character recounting what she remembers from being date raped, a similar theme to The Dark I Know Well from Spring Awakening.
So through music, and from a basis of star George takei’s own memories of living in this internment camp on American soil, Allegiance presents a variety of different characters with different stories and ideas. not all of the Japanese characters in the show have the same belief of what it means to show their allegiance to their country, and not all of the white people are inherently evil. It’s a wide and complicated portrayal of one of the few times in our own history where we did not do the right thing. These families lost what they had built and were forced into camps simply because of what they looked like, and our fear of someone who didn’t look like us, a fear that exists today as anti-Asian American hate crimes remain prevalent in society.
Through the beauty of the characters in Allegiance, the acting of George takei, the brilliance of Lea salonga’s voice, and the untapped star power of Teddy Leung this musical soars and does what it is supposed to do. Challenge its audience, and present a unique perspective, one that probably is sorely lacking in today’s history classes.
As you watch Oppenheimer, continue to think about all of the other things we now know, for it is through our understanding of history that we can prevent its repetition. It is through our own chosen ignorance and apathy, and allowing those two factors to become a part of our educational system that a lack of knowledge about history spurns the idealistic invention and belief in something that you simply are unaware has already been tried before, you just lack the awareness to realize it, because your history has been censored.
As we continue to become complacent with camps of migrants along our borders, let us not forget that this is not the first time we have detained a population based on where they come from and what they look like. There is no detention center full of Canadians, Germans, or the British. And why is that? Why is it that we questioned only the allegiance of Japanese Americans, and not German Americans?
Final Grade: A
