Embracing Hawaii in ‘Manoa Valley’

“Manoa has lots of rain and rainbows,” but even paradise is not enough for everyone. In the Japan America Theatre’s delightfully funny one-weekend-only presentation of Edward Sakamoto’s comedy “Manoa Valley,” dissatisfaction percolates in the Kamiya family as it prepares to celebrate Hawaii’s newly acquired statehood in 1959.

Island pidgin rhythms run rampant throughout. The cultural whitewashing from Hawaiian Kanaka to mainland Kotonk is mildly referenced, but Sakamoto’s piece is really general observations with a cultural twist: A barbecue complete with a freshly beheaded chicken. A man other than the late Tiny Tim playing a ukulele.

Not yet a major tourist trap, this is Honolulu pre-”Hawaii Five-O” and post-Pearl Harbor trauma. With a gentle breeze of nostalgia and relaxed humor, Sakamoto skillfully delineates a family on the brink of opportunity, embracing Hawaiian culture as the resonance of their Japanese heritage fades.

“Manoa Valley” is the second play in Sakamoto’s “Hawai’i No Ka Oi: The Kamiya Family Trilogy.” Where the first play, “Kona Coffee,” deals with the first-generation (or issei) parents and their two second-generation (nisei) sons, “Manoa Valley,” returns to the nisei brothers, Aki (Marcus R. Oshiro) and Tosh (Dann Seki), who are now parents to third-generation (sansei) children.

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Aki and Tosh have escaped the toil of the Kona coffee plantations that ruled their parents’ lives. Aki runs a nursery; Tosh owns a construction business.

Yet for their children, Hawaii presents both opportunity and stagnation. Aki’s son Nobu (Michael Lee) has returned from a mainland college with a haole wife, Susan (Jill Rolston), an offbeat Kotonk styling and political aspirations. Tosh’s son Spencer (Thomas Isao Morinaka) longs to flee from the strictures of his waiting inheritance--his father’s company.

Aside from a few fumbled lines, the 10-member Hawaiian cast has the exuberance and good comedic timing to make all this familial bickering and fussing fun. Director James A. Nakamoto skillfully renders an atmosphere of bluster and affection that glosses over some weak points in the script.

Sakamoto’s script is fairly predictable, at times veering into the cartoonish. We never doubt a happy ending--for everyone except the chicken. Yet there is so much joyous celebration of family and a lost era that one really doesn’t mind at all.