“You might have seen me in the official revival of “1776” playing Edward Rutledge, aka the villain,” Sara Porkalob begins. And indeed we did – although many New York theatergoers might remember her more vividly (and some would say more villainously) for what she said about that musical rather than what she sang in it. Among her frank comments in an interview with New York Magazine, she castigated the production she was in as “cringey” and said that she was only giving “75 percent” to “1776” since she was “compromising my desire to do my own work.”
That was in 2022. This week, I finally got a chance to see her perform her own work – the solo show that convinced director Diana Paulus to hire her for “1776” – and now I understand what she was trying to say.
Porkalob is currently touring the country with “Dragon Lady,” which premiered at Seattle’s Intiman Theater in 2017. It was most recently presented through this Sunday at Pittsburgh’s Public Theater, which partnered with the League of Live Stream Theater to “simulcast” it. That is how I saw it.
One of the advantages of watching the “Dragon Lady” livestream was her video introduction to the show she started putting together as a senior in college more than a decade ago: “Dragon lady ultimately is a love letter, not only to my grandmother — the matriarch of my family — but really to immigrants everywhere.”
The show begins with Maria addressing her granddaughter Sara (aka the audience) on the eve of her sixtieth birthday party, introducing her new karaoke machine by singing “House of the Rising Sun” substituting her own lyrics, then segueing into rap, as if Grandma were a seasoned entertainer. As it turns out, she is, or was back in Manila: “I’ll give you a synopsis” Maria says. “When grandma was a little girl in the Philippines, my father was brutally murdered. After that, I ran away to work in the city. And I found myself working at the most famous nightclub in all of Manila.”
And then we’re transported back, through original songs (backed by the three-piece Hot Damn Scandal band) and vignettes involving dozens of characters. Both musically and dramatically, Porkalob demonstrates an extraordinary versatility.
Maria was just a child when she started working there as a cleaning lady; when she turned 18, Lola, the “madam” at the “club” told Maria had a choice: she could “work in the back rooms with the other beautiful young lady,” or she could sing in the front “and make these American sailors spend their American dollars.”
She meets just such an American sailor, with the weird Hungarian name of Porkalob, but not until she has some hair-raising experiences involving a local mob boss that can feel like outtakes from a crime thriller.
Once she – and we move – to America, Mr. Porkalob disappears from the story. Maria, now a mother of five children, sometimes disappears from them, putting the burden of childrearing on her oldest daughter, also named Maria – Sara’s mother. If Grandma’s story is full of humor and real-world horror, the scenes among the young siblings are the most affecting.
“Dragon Lady” is the first of a planned three-part “Dragon Cycle,” as she explained at the curtain call. “Dragon Mama,” about Sara’s mother, premiered at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge in 2019. Porkalob describes “Dragon Baby,” which she’s still developing, “from the queer communal house of her childhood in Anchorgage, AK to her teens in conservative hometown of Bremerton, WA to the hallowed halls of a Seattle liberal arts college as she deconstructs her white supremacist education, juggles 5 jobs including but not limited to a phone sex operator, a drug dealer, and a pizza call center aide, and ultimately realizes her purpose in the universe.”
Maybe she can come back to New York with these shows?
