(I apologize in advance that this ended up being as long as it is, but I promise itâs as worth a read as Allegiance is worth watching on Broadway!)
I knew from the moment Allegiance was announced that I was going to have to see it no matter what, initially because of George Takei and Lea Salonga, because of course. And then because of the fact that this was an Asian American musical that was about this time in our history where the American government did an utterly unforgiveably shit thing to Japanese Americans by placing them in internment camps just because of military aggression from a country all around the world.
There are a lot of shows we all wish werenât closing, but Allegiance is a show that NEEDS to be on Broadway, itâs a show that needs to be seen because itâs a lesson in what America did to Americans 70 years ago because of the color of their skin and itâs just not a part of history that gets talked about enough and it needs to be all the more because we are terrifyingly close to it happening again. with Trump and George Takei KNOWS it because he lived through it.Â
Allegiance is his story of what happened to Takei and his family and thousands of other Japanese American families who were rounded up and sent to these camps with nothing more than what they could carry, with literally no choice but to sell their property to their neighbors for less than fractions of what it was actually worth. People got sick and died in these camps because they had dirty water, inadequate medical supplies and overall just terrible forced housing conditions and ALL of this happened under orders of the president and the American government on American soil in the 1940s and we are NOT so far removed from this time in history that survivors of that incarceration are still here to recount their tales (and tell their story)
Itâs 2016 and there are politicians trying to do it all over again and the only thing scarier than that is the fact that there are people who actually blindly support something so goddamn horrifying because itâs not new, America has casually done it before and this country absolutely cannot get to a point where it might even do it again and THAT is why Allegiance matters.
Itâs a history lesson. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but itâs a lesson that needs to be taught and learned and itâs certainly a more entertaining more emotionally engaging way to teach it than through perhaps more traditional outlets like documentaries.Â
Iâve gone really far in this post without touching too much on the show itself, so here we go: itâs INCREDIBLE. It is a theatrical experience. It was beautiful, and it was funny at times, utterly harrowing and heartbreaking at others but also 100% immersive.
I think thereâs the underlying thought in a lot of peopleâs heads (it was in mine at first) that the show is probably closing because some part of it is lacking in some way. Does it rely too much on star power? Is the music just meh?
No. Everything about this show is fucking amazing. The choreography is a mix of traditional Japanese movement and dance in some numbers and American swing in others and the same goes for the music, we get a lot of that classic Broadway sound but we also get a tremendously refreshing amount of distinctively traditional Asian styles round out many of the songs so that you never really forget itâs as much a Japanese musical as it is an American one, itâs not an either/or.Â
The most striking thing about it for us was the production design a the way a lot of the big events were depicted and adapted for the stage. I donât want to give it away because there are a lot of moments that you just NEED to experience in the theater for yourself and I really hope a lot of you get to. Itâs intense in so many ways, and the three of us walking out of that theatre not just sobbing, but sobbing in a way that we just couldnât talk about it for about fifteen minutes while it all sank in.
I think ultimately one of the worst hands this show was dealt was that it opened right as Hamilton, another show that so prominently and importantly features POC, was hitting the high point in its popularity, enough that Allegiance (a show that is of equal historical importance) fell by the wayside as far as media coverage and other buzz, that when people hear about it they just think of it was âthat show with George Takei and Lea Salongaâ and it is SO much more than that. And I also think the marketing team could have done a lot better a lot sooner in regard to really sharing to the public what kind of show it is, the kind of impact it has on anyone who walks out of that theater at the end of the night.
To digress, please please please spread the word about Allegiance. Please tell your friends and family in New York to go see it, tell your friends on Facebook to go see it and then if you can, absolutely get your ass over to the Longacre Theater and watch Allegiance for yourself so you can experience this historical piece of American musical theater for yourself because it closes on February 14th. The good (and bad) thing is that you definitely wonât have to worry about being able to get tickets.
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