Global outreach

Is it a fatal conceit to try to better a foreign country without ever having seen the world through the eyes of its people? This central question posed in Chay Yew’s new play, “A Distant Shore,” at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, takes on particular resonance and urgency in an era of nation-building and terrorism. Connecting the dots, Yew traces how the missteps of the one beget the monstrosities of the other in a mythical Southeast Asian Muslim country.

A prominent voice in contemporary Asian American theater, Yew’s previous plays have chronicled alienation from the outsider’s perch of an immigrant and a gay man. Expanding his scope with this intricately plotted though sometimes overreaching drama, Yew reverses the mirror to explore how an indigenous population becomes alienated within its own borders under the corrosive influence of Western colonialism.

The first act, set in 1924, is a cautionary tale of forbidden interracial love under British rule at the height of its imperial arrogance. The governing resident commissioner, Alan (Daniel Blinkoff), is locked in a torrid affair with Salmah (Tamlyn Tomita), his native translator. The performers’ chemistry brings specificity and heat to the familiar contours of this star-crossed romance, inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Blood Wedding.”

The more intriguing cross-cultural dynamic is between the commissioner’s pregnant wife, Patricia (Maria Cina), and the girl’s bewildered fiance, Zul (Eric D. Steinberg), an ambitious local laborer who’s just bought a rubber plantation. They are brought together by mutual discovery of their mates’ infidelity, their emotional connection bound by recognition of social barriers that cannot be bridged.

The second act shifts to the same city in the present day, where the same actors appear as contemporary incarnations of their characters. In these more enlightened times, colonialism has been “upgraded” to corporate globalism -- with no improvement to the lot of the country’s exploited labor class, despite the trappings of modernization. The shift is ingeniously conveyed in Karl Fredrik Lundeberg’s immersive ambient sound design and Myung Hee Cho’s simple but visually striking scenic design, in which the steel mesh pillars that once represented rubber trees become integrated into a cityscape.

Blinkoff’s Alan is now a more comfortably accented American investigative journalist, again romancing Tomita’s Salmah, who works for the authoritarian government’s shadowy internal security department (Yew effectively draws on his Singapore origins for authenticity).

Steinberg’s Zul is even more alienated this time around as a gay exotic dancer who performs for Western tourists. Cina’s Patricia is now an executive for a multinational corporation who arrives with visions of helping the population, only to realize her inability to alter a merciless economic engine. Minor characters from the first act come into their own here -- Nelson Mashita as a former radical corrupted by bourgeois comfort, Emily Kuroda as his former lover (now a hotel maid) and Esther K. Chae as a transsexual prostitute. Director Robert Egan skillfully taps the considerable range of this talented ensemble.

The play’s Achilles’ heel is the lack of realism in its dialogue, which often better serves the ends of political and philosophical debate than the nuances of character. Some anachronistic lapses -- such as matter-of-fact references to neurotic angst and guilt -- undermine the earlier historical setting. Nevertheless, this challenging and thoughtful drama confronts the complexities -- and ultimate futility -- of trying to keep politics separate from personal relationships. Yew doesn’t endorse acts of terrorism born of tragic desperation, but he denies us the luxury of dismissing such violence as random and irrational.

*

‘A Distant Shore’

Where: Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Ends: May 22

Price: $19 to $40

Contact: (213) 628-2772, www.kirkdouglastheatre.org

Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes