Jesa ★★★ - The Recs

A metaphorical ghost appears several times in Jesa, Jeena Yi’s new dysfunctional family drama now playing at The Public Theater in a co-production with Ma-Yi Theater Company. But unlike in several notable American plays of this ilk where the story is set in a home or apartment that feels, looks, and sounds haunted — August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, Stephen Karam’s The Humans, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate — Jesa is set in a beautifully curated home in a suburb of Orange County, California. Everything looks picture perfect, including the framed family photos hung carefully above the fireplace. Forget shadowy darkness. Forget color. Every well-lit item is neutral, a bougie beige shrine to Crate & Barrel.

It’s a unique and challenging setup for this play about four Korean-American sisters who feel anything but neutral about each other as they reunite to perform jesa, a traditional Korean ritual honoring deceased parents. On the surface, things may look controlled and comfortable, but the reality is anything but, and truths will find a way to creep out before the night is done. In this case, because the house is too new for a spirit to make suitably scary creaking sounds, a boom box heralds its entrance.

The four sisters are very much unalike. The oldest, Tina (Tina Chilip), is a boozy, single chef. Grace (Shannon Tyo), the second born, is the got-it-all-together suburban mom hosting the gathering. Brenda (Christine Heesun Hwang), the third child, is a frustrated theater director who’s moved to the East Coast, and Elizabeth (Laura Sohn), the baby of the family, works in private equity and has the confidence of someone who makes a small fortune.

The front half of the show follows the sisters as they perform the jesa, and the rituals therein provide a unique structure for them to start hammering away at each other’s facades. Once that’s done, however, the play devolves into classic kitchen-sink realism run amok, at least until the spirit decides to crash the party.

But by then it’s too late, at least for much of the audience who have seen all this before and done better. The energy in the middle section of the play sags, and it doesn’t help that the production feels underrehearsed, still finding its footing. The fight scenes feel stilted and uncertain, and none of the performances feel lived in yet except for Tyo’s; characters awkwardly make revelations late in the play that don’t connect clearly or satisfactorily with choices made earlier.

Yi, an actor making her playwriting debut with Jesa, shows much promise and ambition, especially in her thoughtful examination of the consequences of losing one’s culture and language. But even running just 100 minutes, the production feels too much like a long day’s journey into a dispiriting night.