"According to Webster's, a geisha is 'a Japanese woman trained to dance, sing and talk amusingly.' That sounds an awful lot like... me!"
Dishing delicious dirt on Disney is the highlight of writer-performer Miki Yamashita's delightful new one-woman show "The Geisha Next Door" at the cabaret space Upstairs @ Red.
Frustrated by frequent calls for the Japanese-American actress to play "geisha-type" roles, she starts to investigate just what a geisha is. Paralleling that search with recollections of her experiences as a music conservatory student and working in theatre, she starts to see the similarities between the geisha's striving for artistic expression and her own attempts to make it as a performer.
Though the comparisons are often thin, Yamashita (with sharp direction by Mira Kingsley) makes it work on the strength of her considerable comic abilities and ability to switch characters effortlessly. A talented mimic and classically trained singer, she cuts a buoyant swath across the tiny stage as she brings to life a dozen characters, from theatre director Baayork Lee to her decidedly mousy Disney boss.
Though it starts a bit slowly -- in particular, with overly broad impressions of her parents and college teachers -- once the diminutive Yamashita launches into hilarious descriptions of the year-plus she spent working at Walt Disney World, you're hooked. Vividly describing the theme park's peculiar employee culture and "offbeat" (to say the least) personalities, she channels the experience so completely you feel like you witnessed it all, filtered through her eyes and with her ebullient sense of humor.