The danger of watching or reading any drama set in familiar digs is that it's possible to be besotted by loads of comforting references. Book-It Repertory Theatre's adaptation of Queen Anne-based writer Jonathan Raban's Seattle-centric novel "Waxwings" certainly includes quite a few Emerald City touchstones, from the steadfast constancy of KUOW-FM to our busy shipping port to the attitude-challenged, weekly newspaper The Stranger to the city's notorious intolerance of smokers.
If one wanted to take in "Waxwings" just to survey the topography of our lives in what Raban described-during an opening night interview-as an overgrown small town, one could have a fabulous time doing so.
But that would sell "Waxwings" short. Set in 1999, the story reflects, but does not drown in, some of the tumultuous events of that year, including the World Trade Organization conference debacle (a.k.a., the "Battle In Seattle") and the beginning of the end of many starry-eyed, poorly-managed dot-com enterprises.
There is a throwaway line about homegrown Amazon.com and a quick joke about the doomed MyLackey.com, but "Waxwings" is not a piecemeal satire that shoots fish in the convenient barrel of history.
Those niche references are contained in a larger cultural frame that says much about our collective world view, biases and uncertainties. Those things, in turn, are made clearer by contrast with outside forces-such as an international criminal industry exploiting illegal immigration-pushing inward on Seattle's vulnerable underbelly.
Book-It's wonderful set for "Waxwings" allows, with a few simple tricks of the light and minor adjustments, the broad scope of Raban's narrative to unfold. Two dissimilar yet complementary outsiders, brought together by their respective crises, provide the spiritual bookends of the story: British novelist Tom Janeway (Terry Edward Moore) and Chinese immigrant Chick (Sam Lai).
Tom is an appealingly shambling skeptic, a writer on hold while in search of his next book, happily distracted by a weekly commentator gig for National Public Radio, a part-time teaching position at the University of Washington, Web-surfing and afternoons with his four-year-old son, Finn (Jason Woodbury). His understatedly dissatisfied wife, Beth (Teri Lazzara), has a background in newspapers and now works for one of those nakedly useless, late-90s online companies owned by a nouveau riche megalomaniac (Ray D. Gonzalez) burning up venture capital.
Observing the whimsies, untutored tastes and new philanthropic customs of Seattle's tech millionaires-especially in the broader context of the city's strange brew of progressive politics, political correctness and obvious economic disparity-Tom senses Dickensian forces at work.
Chick, meanwhile, arrives in Seattle via a freight container full of putrefying human waste and remains. (He acquires his name after mis-hearing someone call him "chink.") Presumed dead but avoiding INS agents, Chick figures it's better to remain deceased while still owing $59,000 to the Snakeheads, a crime syndicate that arranged his departure from China.
A natural hustler, Chick swiftly finds work scraping asbestos but soon is a generous boss to his own team of undocumented workers. He's also a quick study of the dark side of the American Dream, the way success stories are built on a mountain of other people's broken backs and failures.
Tom and Chick meet at an opportune moment. Beth, caught up in the go-go spirit of the times, leaves Tom and takes Finn with her. Overwhelmed by loneliness, Tom is pleased to be talked into hiring Chick to make (possibly unnecessary) repairs in his home; he even lets Chick make a hidden sleeping area in his basement.
Things take a dark and unexpected turn when Tom becomes a suspect in the kidnapping of a young girl. While Beth's employer's stock goes into a free-fall-emblematic of the tech-bubble burst right around the end of the millennium-a different kind of Seattle shadow-self overwhelms Tom. His eccentricities, attitude, look and habits-and the fact that he was talking to himself at a park where the girl disappeared-suddenly shout out his Differentness to a community that gets a little demented where kids are concerned. (How exactly? Think about those young children who have been suspended from local schools for carrying tiny, G.I. Joe weapons and the like.) Shunned by reactionary liberals in his work and life, Tom turns to Chick, another kind of fugitive, for a semblance of family.
I haven't read Raban's book, but director Mary Machala and writer Julie Beckman, who wrote the script, have not clearly reconciled or integrated the point of Tom's crisis with the zeitgeist thrust of the rest of the story. That doesn't mean it feels wrong; it just doesn't fit quite as seamlessly as Chick's tale, in which the latter sees Seattle prosperity as a game to be won.
Machala's fine cast includes Kelly Kitchens, James Dean, George Mount, Kathy Hsieh and Brandon Whitehead, each of whom plays multiple parts in what always appears to be a populous production. "Waxwings" is a stimulating experience.
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