Sadec 1965: A Love Story by Flora Le tells the story of her trip across Vietnam on a motorcycle in a mission to visit her estranged, late father’s hometown to find emotional closure. The performance oscillates between time periods, recollections of Le’s trip interspersed with flashbacks of the life that led her to that narrow road, a life full of romantic and sexual misadventures that left her feeling increasingly empty inside, eventually realizing that these awkward fumblings were merely an inadequate proxy for the love her father never showed her. So, after his death, Le decides to ride across Vietnam to visit his hometown and search for the ghosts of his—and her own—past. The fact that this is a true story is what makes it most endearing, as we are assured the veracity of the human tale laid before us, and the aplomb with which Le has managed to distill years of emotional experience down to an hour is impressive.
A couple of things prevented me from becoming fully immersed in the performance, however. When it comes to storytelling, the stage has an advantage over text or podcast in how it provides the performer with a physical space within which to express their story. A skilled performer relies not only on the story they’re telling, but also their body language, how they use the stage space, and their vocal tonality.
At a solo show from last year’s Fringe Festival, Ingrid Garner in Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany similarly told a moving personal tale, but there were some noteworthy differences that kept me hooked. Garner used a few simple abstract props to effectively illustrate a great many items and objects within the story. She made dynamic use of the stage space, and her body language and tone of voice were electric and expressive, forcefully commanding attention, which powerfully pulled the audience into the emotion that she was portraying.
In contrast, during Sadec, while the story itself evidently came from an emotional place, Le’s performance had a very narrow range, and didn’t well utilize these techniques that make or break live productions. Throughout the piece, she paced back and forth within a small radius, making limited use of the physical space, and missing much of the potential to use her body language expressively to illustrate the emotional beats of the story. Her tone of voice was quiet and gentle, and except for one brief moment, the range of expression was so limited that whether she was talking about joy, trauma, or anything in between, the pitch and force never changed all that much. This neglects the potential for a performer to use the power within their own voice to carry the audience along, speaking quietly in subdued moments while ramping up the volume and expression in emotionally charged moments.
Taking the story at face value, Sadec 1965: A Love Story is a charming look at a journey of self-discovery, and it’s worth sharing with the world. With a bit of practice utilizing dynamic theatrical performance techniques, I do believe Le could unlock and unleash the latent power within this mild-mannered performance.
The Victoria Fringe Fest runs until Sunday, September 3.