Fast Company
Opening Night: March 12, 2014
Closing: April 6, 2014
Theater: Ensemble Studio Theater
Ever since she was a kid, all Blue wanted was to be a grifter. But her mother, the legendary Mable Kwan, cut her out of the family business. Mable said Blue lacked "the gift of the grift." So Blue went to college. Took a class in game theory. Made herself into a new kind of con artist. Now Blue is staring down the barrel of the score of the decade, and everything is going wrong. She has to call her family for help. And now they’ll find out who’s the greatest grifter of them all.
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March 24, 2014
When writing a play about con artists double- and triple-crossing each other, it’s probably a good rule of thumb to stay one or two steps ahead of the suckers, er, audience. That’s where Carla Ching’s Fast Company, an eager but slight crime comedy, stumbles. Despite an energetic (and rushed) opening scene in which college student Blue (Stephanie Hsu) explains to Francis (Christopher Larkin) how their brother H (Moses Villarama) screwed her out of a million-dollar vintage comic book, the action unfolds in a strangely linear pattern of predictable reversals and gotcha! reveals.
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March 24, 2014
In the writing of Carla Ching we are often deposited into fascinating worlds where the negotiations between people have been compromised by cold transactions, be it a world where those in need of organ transplants must compete in a national poker tournament, or one where children cling to social media as communication with their family, or—as in her new play Fast Company—where a family can only relate to reach other through the cutthroat world of grifting.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 21, 2014
Carla Ching, a gifted dramatic wordsmith, has tightened up her style since her early effort TBA. Her latest play is Fast Company, a crackling one-act about a family of Asian-American con artists, directed by Robert Ross Parker, best known for his work on numerous Vampire Cowboys productions. Though this is a much more compact work than those wild comic-book adventures, it shares some of their electric energy, kept sizzling by a fine cast of four.
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March 19, 2014
Fast Company by Carla Ching is a clever—perhaps, too clever—tale of yet another family of grifters, this time Asian American, although there are few overt references to their ethnicity. The bone of contention is an extremely rare and valuable comic book that Blue (Stephanie Hsu) has purloined as one of her cons. It appears that H (Moses Villarama) has stolen it out from under her and is going to sell it for his own enrichment. Blue drafts Francis (Christopher Larkin) to help her relieve H of the comic book. In the end Blue and Francis draft Mable (Mia Katigbak) to ensure that this con within a con will work.
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March 25, 2014
Carla Ching’s Fast Company, at the Ensemble Studio Theater, offers a crafty take on the dysfunctional-family tale. The Kwan siblings manipulate, deceive and forsake one another. But it’s all for the good of the family business. That business? Con artistry. Hard-working, intelligent, and ambitious, Blue (Stephanie Hsu) is the Asian-American clan’s black sheep. Years ago, her stepmother, Mable (Mia Katigbak), announced that Blue would never make it as a grifter. Undaunted, Blue runs scams on the sly even as she works toward her undergraduate degree, confident that course work in game theory will help her achieve bigger and better scores. But when a con involving a million-dollar comic book goes calamitously wrong, she must call on her stepbrother, Francis, and Mable to keep the cops at bay.
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