A Dream in Hanoi Home
beautifully realized
documentary”
—SF Weekly

SF Weekly Review

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| Phillip Fradkin |

Reviews
April 2002

EAST MEETS WEST

American-Vietnamese relations have been cordial at best and lethal at worse, but A Dream in Hanoi proposes other possibilities for cross-cultural engagement besides war. Written, produced and directed by Tom Weidlinger, this beautifully realized documentary narrated by F. Murray Abraham follows a fall 2000 production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream in Vietnam, but it has a Shakespearean sense of drama and humor of its own. The Vietnamese and American theater companies involved aspires to create a bilingual, bicultural version of the play; the result is a clash of wills and worldviews that leaves participants from both camps forever changed.

Colorful opening images of members of the two companies exchanging pleasantries hint at a smooth transition across literary and cultural lines, but problems soon emerge. Resentments develop into ruptures that threaten to capsize the entire production, with a lot of misery and anger generated on each side during the process. Vietnamese director Doan Hoang Giang shocks the Americans when he insists on adding an entourage for Puck consisting of “six masked drummer boy fairies.” The Vietnamese shrug at the inflexible Western theater types; “Americans want a script even for a soccer match!” Even the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information, which had sponsored and encouraged the project (supposedly to teach the Vietnamese how to make money from art), abruptly boots the group out of its venue and forbids them to sell tickets.

Yet A Dream in Hanoi is no gloomfest, largely because of its engaging cast and its discovery of commonality in chaos. Contentious meetings, troubled rehearsals, and tearful harangues balance with shared laughter at a joke well played or a bond over the common hatred of the costumes. As in the play, this film’s “characters” awake from their dream with everything right again.

Gary Morris