'RICE BOY': FINDING IDENTITY IN TODAY'S WORLD.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

Perched atop a tree from which he can see across the village, to the water's edge, 12-year-old Tommy informs us that he ``likes it high up.'' The line is echoed later on in Sunil Kuruvilla's play ``Rice Boy'' by Tommy's Auntie, speaking to her daughter, Tina. ``You have to look from above,'' she says.

Auntie can speak with authority. She has perspective that the much younger Tina and Tommy lack. She's not the first character to understand the benefit of being up and away from earth-bound cares. Nor will she be the last.

The second entry in Taper, Too, the Center Theater Group's experimental play series held at the Actors' Gang, ``Rice Boy'' is as insightful as it is wistful. Directed with a clear vision and an eye for visuals by Chay Yew, the play addresses cultural longing while also showing why finding an identity is so difficult. Small wonder the play, which was developed in the Taper's New Works festival, was snapped up by the prestigious Yale Repertory Theater for its world premiere late last year.

Told primarily from Tommy's point of view, ``Rice Boy'' chronicles the boy's desire to essentially renounce his ancestry. Tommy and his father, hoping to start a new life, spent the summer of 1975 in India, where his wife, Tommy's mother, had died several years earlier.

The action bounces between that summer, and six months later back in Canada where Tommy (played by Ravi Kapoor) takes every mention of India as a potential threat. ``You're Indian,'' he tells his father (Subash Kundanmal). ``I'm Canadian.''

Victoria Petrovich's wide-open parquet floor of a set and the creative use of flowing saris make it easy for us to imagine panoramic vistas. We also come to understand why Tommy doesn't want to go back. India symbolizes too much loss.

Tommy and his father aren't the only members of the family who have been emotionally damaged. Back in India, Uncle and Auntie (Shelly Desai and Meera Simhan) are stuck in a largely loveless marriage, united only in their desire to marry off their crippled and over-protected daughter, Tina (Lina Patel) to a man she has never met. Granny (Noor Shic) pines for her dead husband, and the family's servant girl (Purva Bedi) is unhappily divorced from her husband, the local fish seller (Ossie Mair).

Poking his nose into pretty much everyone's affairs, Tommy tries to liberate Tina by taking her into the city. He does his job a little too well.

Although it has the feel of a memory play, ``Rice Boy'' doesn't spend much time on reflection or introspection. It seems a peculiar choice, then, to have an adult (Kapoor, effective in full man-child mode) playing the adolescent Tommy. Patel's quietly tolerant Tina makes us see that ``Rice Boy'' is as much Tina's story as it is Tommy's.

Director Yew finds beauty and hurt in small moments - the way the servant girl beats her laundry, Tina's willful silence during an electricity blackout. The final image, of a father and son - dizzy from spinning - reaching for each other's hands after too much time spent at odds. Here is a production worth savoring by a playwright worth watching.

``RICE BOY''

Where: Taper, Too at the Actors' Gang, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through May 13.

Tickets: $20. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three stars.

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Photo:

Lina Patel and Ravi Kapoor share a scene from the Taper, Too production of ``Rice Boy.''