Lorenzo Thione

Jay Kuo’s musical Allegiance features music and lyrics by Kuo with a book by Marc Acito, Kuo, and Lorenzo Thione. The story focuses on Japanese-American internment during World War II and stars George Takei as well as taking inspiration from his own childhood experiences. The story begins in the present day, with Sam Kimura (played by George Takei) receiving his sister’s will. It leads him to think of the past, where he (played by Telly Leung) had recently graduated from college just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. Sam, his sister Kei (Lea Salonga), his father Tatsuo (Paul Nakauchi), and his grandfather, Ojii-chan (George Takei), are forced to sell their property and move to Heart Mounting, Wyoming.

A significant part of the story deals with intergenerational conflict, with Sam wanting to enlist in the Army to prove his loyalty to the country in which he was born, even as that country refuses to treat him as a full citizen. His father resents the U.S. government’s policies of exclusion. These characters’ conflict helps to dramatize the debates within the Japanese-American community over how best to respond to their treatment and assert their rights as citizens. Sam and his father have a falling out, leaving Kei and Ojii-chan in the middle. Sam begins wooing the camp nurse, Hannah Campbell (Katie Rose Clarke) while Kei starts dating Frankie Suzuki (Michael K. Lee), who leads efforts to protest the Japanese-Americans’ treatment in the camp. Tatsuo is sent to Tule Lake for being a “no-no,” while his son enlists in the Army. Meanwhile, Mike Masaoka (Greg Watanabe) struggles to represent the best interests of Japanese-Americans as a leader in the Japanese American Citizens League. While the musical adapts elements of George Takei’s own history, Mike Masaoka is the only historical figure represented in the play other than audio clips of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Infamy Speech.” Tensions only increase during the war, leading to a falling-out when Sam returns home to his family.

The musical premiered in September 2012 in San Diego before moving to Broadway from October 2015 through February 2016. This recording was made on Broadway in January 2016. This box set including a DVD recording of the musical and a bonus feature DVD; prop replicas of posters as well as copies of historical documents including an intake tag and replicas of Takei’s family photographs; some original art; an enamel pin of the play’s logo; a scrap of fabric from a costume worn by Telly Leung; and One Family, Indivisible: Allegiance: Behind the Curtain, a behind-the-scenes book by George Takei. The box set would be a useful tool for history teachers looking for a new way to introduce their students to the topic of Japanese Internment. It would also be useful in a theatre studies course. This box set is 877/2500.… (meer)