LA Review: 'The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow'

On its surface, Rolin Jones’ play seems like a lighthearted comedy about a young woman who is scientifically gifted, using her computer to run a business out of her bedroom. But once the 2003 play gets up and running, its more fanciful aspects take a back seat to questions of identity, family, and self-worth.

The play’s trappings include missile guidance and propulsion systems, android technology, language translation software, video conferencing, and other aspects of military and digital technology. At its focus is Jennifer Marcus (Jennifer Jung), a 22-year-old Chinese girl who lives in Calabasas, Calif., with her adoptive parents, Marshall (Jaimz Woolvett) and Adele (Susan E. Taylor) Marcus. Jones first establishes Jennifer’s feelings of having been abandoned by her birth mother and her almost-crippling OCD and agoraphobia, then shows how she uses her genius-level IQ and knowledge of military technology to reach out across thousands of miles to China, where she hopes to meet her birth mother face-to-face yet without ever leaving her bedroom.

Beyond Jennifer’s strained relationship with the imperious Adele, Jones’ comedically oriented script is essentially a character study of a young adult in search of herself, made intriguing by the bizarre yet admirably resourceful methods she relies on to realize her goals. The crux of “Jenny Chow” involves Jennifer’s creating and building a robot—she calls it Jenny Chow—that looks like her, can fly, and can speak English and Mandarin. The device allows Jones to explore the bond between parent and child: Jenny Chow not only flies to rural China to meet Jennifer’s birth mom but also becomes something of a surrogate daughter to Jennifer, who later cruelly rejects the android in the same way Jennifer feels she has been rejected by her birth mother and by Adele.

While honoring the script’s off-the-wall tone, Sean F. Gray’s measured direction never lets the laughs overpower the story’s serious foundation. Jung’s performance merges Jennifer’s optimism and joyful smile with a poignant sadness born of the belief that she is not only not loved but also undeserving of love. Jung also succeeds in making credible her character’s remarkable proficiency in dealing with (and often manipulating) people by remote control, aided by Gray’s staging, which often effects long-distance conversations as if they’re occurring face-to-face. The rest of Gray’s cast boosts his and Jung’s portrait of Jennifer. Woolvett’s Marshall is as laid-back and loving as Taylor’s Adele is cold and rigid. Andrew Pedroza creates the radically different personas of Todd, Jennifer’s nerdy fan-boy friend, and Terrance, a sexually repressed Mormon who helps Jennifer trace her genealogy. Skip Blas essays three outstanding laugh-inducing portrayals—topped by his deliciously over-the-top Russian scientist. Sayaka Miyatani’s Jenny Chow is endearingly innocent, and like most children, she only wants to please her parents—in this case, Jennifer, whom she views as her mother.

Though the staging is low-tech—allowing us to more closely study the story’s characters—Naomi Kasahara’s large upstage panel, which resembles a multicolored circuit board, costumer Martina Lee Jeans’ design of Jenny Chow’s appearance, and Andrew Vonderschmitt’s special effects all nicely tie in with the scientific themes and are complemented by Gray’s prop work, Daniel Bergher’s lighting, and Jonathan David Lewis’ sound design.

Presented by and at Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. May 18–June 16. Fri. and Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (562) 494-1014 or www.lbplayhouse.org.