Off-Broadway Theater Review: The Oldest Boy

This Story Idea Proves a Bit of a Leap of Faith

By Lauren Yarger
You’re a mother and of course that means you want the best for your son. But what if the “best” means that when he is just 3, you have to give him over to the care of strangers in a foreign land and never see him again?

Such is the question playwright Sarah Ruhl wants us to ponder in her new work, The Oldest Boy, getting an Off-Broadway run at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre. It seems Tenzin (portrayed by a puppet created and directed by Matt Acheson of War Horse fame), the toddler son of an American woman (Celia Keenan-Bolger) and a Tibetan man (James Yaegashi), has been recognized as the reincarnation of a recently deceased Lama, a high Buddhist teacher. A visiting lama (James Saito) and a monk (Jon Norman Schneider) want the parents to allow them to take Tenzin to their temple in India for training.

To make the idea a bit more plausible, Ruhl (Stage Kiss, In the Other Room, Dead Man’s Cell Phone; faculty at Yale School of Drama) pens the mother as someone who embraces and who eventually converts to the Buddhist faith.

Even still…..

Apparently the reincarnated lama/boy (who seems really creepy in his wooden puppet form -- manipulated by some chorus members -- and voiced in a whiny manner by full-grown Ernest Abuba) needs to go back, but his parents can’t come with him. Oh, they go check out the place (vividly created with projections, costumes, lighting and choreography designed by Mimi Lien, Anita Yavich, Japhy Weideman, and Barney O’Hanlon respectively), but once a special ceremony takes place the toddler transforms into his former, older self – at least in the eyes of his mother. Emotionally struggling with giving up her boy, she is thrilled that her new baby is a girl and can’t be taken away for training in a monastery.

Really? Would any mother willingly drop off her son in another country, say goodbye and return home convinced that the sacrifice would be worth it in the long run? Maybe, but not me, so I struggled with the plausibility of the plot throughout the play. Even if you became convinced that your son was the reincarnation of a wise teacher who wanted to return to his roots, wouldn’t you want to stay with him and see him while he was growing up? Could you really stand their while your son cried and miserably and begged you not to allow the monks to cut his hair and let them? I couldn’t.

Let’s put it into context to which I can relate. Say my son were discovered to be in line to the throne of England and he needed to grow up at Buckingham Palace to be trained in his royal heritage. Would I want to stand in the way of his being able to claim his inheritance? No. I would want him to be able to ride to the hounds, attend state dinners and wear the crown jewels with the best of them. But you’d better believe the queen would have to provide a suite at the castle for me too, because I can’t imagine packing him up at the age of 3, dropping him off at William and Kate’s and never seeing him again. And if they insisted on giving him a haircut to make him look like Prince Charles, you better believe I would object.

There is no loss of affection between the mother and son in the play, even when the older man’s soul seems to take over the boy, so the whole question about giving him up totally and making a sacrifice seems to be more about creating a plot device to give emotional fodder rather than grounding a story in plausible circumstance (Keenan-Bolger does justice to the flighty, conflicted American woman). The father even suggests at one point that they can move to India and visit the boy on weekends. Good idea.

That said, there isn’t too much tension about the religious choices of the mother either. Raised Catholic, the woman embraced the “scientific” and “rational” qualities of Buddhism in a search for God that also took her through a time of atheism (ironically, she hates the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son). She met her Tibetan husband when she fell in love with the food he cooked at his restaurant (this and other elements of the story are told in flashbacks, directed by Rebecca Taichman in a manner that doesn’t confuse) and now, it appears their meeting was ordained when their son, as his former Lama self, chose her to be her mother in his rebirth.

She doesn’t really answer, I noticed, however, when her young son starts asking questions and making philosophical ponderings about God. She later decides she is ready to convert and asks for guidance from the visiting lama who says he used to be her son’s student.

The highlights in this otherwise non-engaging two-hour production are some comedic moments with the monk and the beautiful backdropping which incorporates live action, sound and images to transport us to spiritual Asia.

The Oldest Boy is Reincarnated Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 8 pm; Wednesday and Saturday at 2 and 8 pm; Sunday at 3 pm at the Mitzi E. Newhouse, Lincoln Center, 150 West 65th St., NYC. Tickets $87. http://www.lct.org/shows/the-oldest-boy; (800) 432-7250.

Christians might also like to know:

-- Buddhist meditation, chanting and prayer

-- God's name taken in vain