Michele Selene Ang Photo by Kevin Berne

Mother of Exiles takes place in three different years: 1898, 1999 and 2063. The 19th century scenes are easily the strongest of the three. In them we meet Eddie Loi (Michele Selene Ang), a young Chinese woman passing as a man in order gain entry to the United States. (Even though under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 any Chinese person, regardless of gender, was barred from immigrating.) Eddie had somehow made it into the country and worked on a farm where she met a laborer named Modesto (Ricardo Vázquez), who impregnates her, effectively ending her ability to pass as a man. The character of Eddie is easily the most interesting in the play. Detained on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, the West Coast's counterpart to Ellis Island, Eddie is a woman fighting those trying to deport her and place her baby in an orphanage run by a severe missionary (Emma Kikue), using the only weapons available to her–her wits and her firm resolve to find a better life, if not for herself, then at least for her child.

The first sign that Mother of Exiles is taking a wrong turn occurs when Eddie begs for a piece of fruit–any fruit. It turns out the fruit is not to nourish herself, but is meant as an offering to her ancestors, who, after Eddie bows three times, appear projected on the upstage wall and start spouting predictions of her child's future and instructions to Eddie. The use of the supernatural in drama often annoys me, and here it simply feels too facile to draw upon this sort of deus ex machina device, when simply allowing the action to play out would let us see what happens to the characters for ourselves.

Once Eddie gives birth to her child, whom she names "Plum Blossom" in honor of a tree on the farm that she nurtured into sprouting fruit (and which will play an odd role in later scenes), a kind Hispanic woman who works on Angel Island manages (in a rather ludicrous plot twist) to switch the baby from the missionary's basket into her own without the missionary noticing.

Fast forward to 1999, where Plum Blossom's grandson Braulio (Vázquez again) is a new member of the U.S. Border Patrol in Miami, on the lookout for Cuban emigres fleeing their island on makeshift rafts. The tone shift from the scenes in Angel Island, which had been rather somber, authoritarian and pleading, is incredibly jarring, as Huang and director Jaki Bradley play this second act as a broad comedy, with Braulio's boss wheedling him to be part of the team and join the rest of the crew at a local bar for a night of "team building" that consists of Jägerbombs and karaoke. Once again, there is a young woman in peril, looking for a new home for herself and her baby. And, once again (though this time by an odd accident of dancing to Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca"), there is an appeal made to the ancestors, who now appear live, treading a walkway upstage. In yet another ridiculous plot point, Braulio ends up with the refugee, evidently to help raise a child that is not his own.

I won't go deeply into the insanity of the third act, set in 2063, after an evident climate crisis has made Miami uninhabitable, and set Eddie's great-great-great grandchildren on a journey to find a new land, because the last action of the play is so beyond plausible that I overheard more than one fellow theatregoer express the thought I was having: "no mother would ever do that!"

In addition to the ridiculous plot, the acting is as uneven as the varying tones of the three acts. Ang is wonderful as the young immigrant, and David Mason manages to clearly delineate the differences between the three main characters he played, even if he wildly overplays the role of the border patrol crew chief. I couldn't wait for that portion of the show to end, and not simply because of Mason's (and others) overacting.

Berkeley Rep has already addressed the plight of Chinese immigrants in their brilliant 2022 production of Lloyd Suh's The Far Country, so I'm befuddled as to why they chose to stage this clearly less powerful look at similar issues. I've long held that Berkeley Rep is the finest of our local theatre companies (Regional Theatre Tony Award winner), but this is their weakest offering in many seasons.

Mother of Exiles runs through December 21, 2025, at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Peet's Theatre, 2025 Addison Street, Berkeley CA. Shows are Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:00pm, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Saturdays at 2:00 p.m. There is an additional matinee on Tuesday, November 25 at 1:00pm. Tickets are $62-$140, with discounts available for those under 35. For tickets and information, please visit www.berkeleyrep.org or call the box office at 510-647-2949.