There may be only one actor physically present, but dozens of others share the stage in Andrew Weems' artful reminiscence of pre-adolescent years spent in early 1970s Nepal.
To begin with, there is Tenzing Lama. A Nepali equivalent of Joe Smith, Lama is the befuddled Sherpa huckster of homeland tchotchkes in an East Village cafe that sparks Weems' long-dormant memories. "Namas-taaay!" he shouts by default when his English fails him. The greeting can mean hello or goodbye.
There also are Weems' hippie parents, stranded in Katmandu after their Peace Corps service, who quote Bertolt Brecht and herd their sneaker-shod students through mountain passes at 18,500 feet. Also present is Mr. Singh, a Nepali colleague of his father's who hopes Western progress will let his children grow fat on hamburgers. So, too, arrives Mr. Cross, the British embassy thespian whose need for a boy who can "learn many lines and be very loud" draws Weems to his first experience on the boards.
But, most of all, Weems shares the stage with the ghosts of his father, the adventurous engineer whose State Department post first brought them to Nepal, and his Boston-bred mother. It is for the latter that Weems displays the most empathy, her stoic loyalty to her husband challenged by lingering homesickness and the uncertainty of raising her children so near a leper colony.
These remembrances occur amid Elizabeth Caitlin Ward's eclectic set, composed of busy clusters of Buddhist accoutrements and supplementing Weems' tales neatly with pieces of floating fancy.
Weems is an engaging and mirthful storyteller, not portraying his characters as much as channeling them, donning and doffing their skins with nimble readiness. He croons the records his mother listens to for escape in the voices of Crosby, Sinatra and Holiday, even mimicking the scritch-scritch as the old licorice platters spin. And few can imitate a startled dachshund so well.
At first, Weems' approach feels much like Katmandu itself must: chaotic and bewildering, unsteady on any single subject and hopping between seemingly scattershot, albeit clever, observations about life as an itinerant actor in New York.
But it soon gains focus, especially in replays of a jumbled Thanksgiving when youthful idealism poignantly slams into reality, and Christmas carols are sung for a cheering audience of Hindus and Buddhists. Weems preserves the perspective of a young boy striving to make friends among the children of other displaced families, the rampant poverty making its psychic impact even as he harbors his first schoolboy crush.
With Weems as an expert guide, we can share his fascination for the experience, and marvel over whether any of it could ever have been real.