Issue date: 1/25/05 Section: Arts and Culture

Keira Loughran´s character in Little Dragon believes she is Bruce Lee´s illegitimate daughter. If you were Bruce Lee´s secret lovechild, how would you use your powers - for good, or for awesome?

Little Dragon kicks ass! The current K'Now Theatre production of Keira Loughran's Summerworks 2002 hit runs until the end of the month at Theatre Passe Muraille. The play, directed by Marion de Vries, is the story of Jen McDonald (played by Loughran), a Chinese-Canadian student at Queen's University who discovers her Eastern roots. While Jen explores her previously unknown Chinese heritage, she invents a whole mythology for herself to draw strength from; she becomes convinced that she's the illegitimate daughter of Bruce Lee.

Loughran claims that she was inspired to write the story after she discovered a picture of her father that she thought looked remarkably like Bruce Lee. Like Jen, Loughran's mother is Chinese-Canadian, as was her father who died when she was very young, and like Jen, Loughran's mother re-married a Caucasian Canadian, resulting in both women's Anglo last names. Jen begins to study aikido, a Japanese martial art, but fuses her study with reading about Bruce Lee and his own fighting style, dong fu. This requires an extremely physical production, but the cast is certainly up for the challenge; the aikido must have taken months of preparation! Much of the movement is choreographed as contact improvisation, which adds to otherwise very sparse look of the show.

Loughran is compelling as Jen, and very easy to relate to. As Jen's grandmother, Nina Lee Aquino provides a hilariously comic performance. And Michelle Polak (this girl is everywhere!) is excellent as Eug, who gets Jen interested in aikido, and then gets interested in Jen. Richard Lee is good as Jen's Sensai, but better as a campy Bruce Lee in Jen's fantasies. Rounding out the cast are Julian Doucet, an actor who is quite well known, that I was surprised to see in such a small role, and Angela Besharah as Corey, Jen's roommate. Angela is a recent graduate of UofT's University College Drama Program, and while her performance was good, I found it a bit unnerving that in a play which decries racism, it included a curly red-haired, green tartan wearing, Irish step-dancing stereotype reminiscent of Kimmy Gibbler from TV's Full House. Let's hope it's ironic. The sound design by Lyon Smith (Polak's real life boyfriend) is excellent, veering from his playing guitar to pumping bastard pop remixes through the theatre's speakers.

At times the show veered into awkward sentimentality and is a bit slow paced in the second half, but overall this is a terrific, funny, and smart show with universal appeal. What a fantastic start to the new year in Toronto theatre; Keira Loughran is definitely an artist to watch.

Little Dragon plays at Theatre Passe Muraille until January 30th. Visit www.passemuraille.on.ca

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