“Everybody’s raving about Cole Horibe, who played Lee. He was a contestant on “’So You Think You Can Dance,’” and apparently he’s got it all — looks, charisma and high kicks. “’I’d never heard of him before, but he was amazing,’” says a potential investor. “’The kid is a star.’” -Michael...
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Starring in David Henry Hwang’s new Off-Broadway show “Kung Fu,” about the life of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, Horibe was discovered for the role after appearing on the ninth season of “So You Think You Can Dance.” On his lifelong dream of playing Bruce Lee. “In high school a friend told me about a teenage Bruce Lee film they were going to make in Hollywood, and he told me to get a video together to send in. At that point I was trying method acting, so maybe for two or three months I was in character as Bruce Lee and I wouldn’t even respond to Cole.” On rehearsing for the show. “Physically it wasn’t harder than rehearsing for ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’but my focus was 95 percent on the acting and the script rather than the movements of the show. That took a far back seat to the acting.” On how he relates to Lee. “Fundamentally we are very much the same. In martial arts I kind of jumped around and did a lot of different styles just like he did. Then when I started dancing is when I came up with my own unique style, which was like a fusion of contemporary and martial arts. It’s like what Bruce Lee was always saying, ‘Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.’He kind of just mashed it all together and came up with his own style of Jeet Kune Do, and that’s what I do in my life.” Original...
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“Kung Fu” is a classic (some might sneer cliché) showbiz saga about an unlikely nobody who dreams of Hollywood stardom. Tailor it around the legendary Bruce Lee, however, and the hoary scenario assumes fresh cultural meanings. Bouncing off author David Henry Hwang’s smooth, stylish storytelling, director Leigh Silverman’s production unleashes a series of rowdy rock-‘em-sock-‘em martial arts sequences that are beautiful and seem extremely realistic. Premiering on Monday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, “Kung Fu” is a winning event for those audiences who love red-hot theatricality as much as it is for fans who love Bruce Lee. Along the way of dramatizing the action star’s life, Hwang thoughtfully addresses issues about masculine Asian identity in the United States. The result is a smart, entertaining bio-drama about a cool guy who overcame racial obstacles with brilliant bursts of kinetic genius. In much the same way, the sizzling theatrics created by Silverman, choreographer Sonya Tayeh, fight director Emmanuel Brown, the designers and the 12-member company punctuate Hwang’s drama. Wait, there’s more. Leaping into the New York theater world is former “So You Think You Can Dance” near-winner Cole Horibe, who is tremendous as Bruce Lee. A magnetic presence, all expressive eyebrows and gestures, Horibe acts naturally, moves beautifully and projects intensely an ambitious soul burning to become a star. The detail of Horibe’s portrayal is supple and convincing, even to the way that Lee’s accent modifies over the years. Lee’s story unfolds within a shabby martial arts studio, much like the one in Seattle, where Lee began teaching kung-fu classes in the 1960s. These dingy white cinderblock walls and mirrors transform into other locations in David Zinn’s fluent setting, which easily handles the action sequences vividly realized by designers Ben Stanton (lighting), Anita Yavich (costume), Darron L. West (sound) and Darrel Maloney (projections). Composer Du Yun’s music effectively heightens the atmospherics. This fusion of slick storytelling, kinetic action and bold visuals is enhanced by the ensemble. In addition to Horibe’s memorable debut, there are strong performances by Francis Jue as Lee’s disparaging father, Phoebe Strole as Lee’s supportive wife and Bradley Fong in a dual role as Lee’s son and as his boyhood self. The remaining company members ably depict several roles each and all...
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NEW YORK — In the first scene of Kung Fu (*** out of four), David Henry Hwang’s new play about the iconic martial artist Bruce Lee, the central character is trying to pick up a girl. It’s 1959, and Patty, as she is introduced, is a Japanese-American college student and aspiring modern dancer, enamored of Martha Graham. Bruce has come to Seattle from Hong Kong, bringing with him a different set of influences and experiences. But before she blows him off, he shows her a few moves — and she returns the favor, their bodies communicating both tension and grace. “You’re not my type,” Patty finally tells Bruce, explaining, “I usually date Americans.” He presses on. “In China, many hero!” he insists in slightly broken English, to which she responds, “Maybe in Hong Kong, but not here.” The scene is brief, but beautifully played, by ensemble member Kristen Faith Oei and So You Think You Can Dance alumnus Cole Horibe. And it provides a telling introduction to a work that uses simple language and fluid, vibrant movement to examine our notions of, and misconceptions about, race, cultural identity and manhood. Those who equate its title with bombastic action films may find Kung Fu, which opened off-Broadway Monday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, surprisingly delicate. The playwright and director Leigh Silverman — who teamed with Hwang on another Signature Theatre Company production, Golden Child, as well as Broadway’s Chinglish — emphasize the thoughtful and lyrical qualities of “gung fu.” Bruce tells his pupils that the practice is more about concentration than lashing out, calling it “fighting without fighting.” Mind you, our hero — whose life is traced from his late teens to a couple of years before his death in 1973, at the age of 32, with flashbacks to his boyhood — isn’t portrayed as the most mellow of pacifists. Haunted by the memory of his father, presented here as a player of clown roles (Lee’s dad was a Cantonese Opera performer) and by stereotypes of Asian men as weak and deferential, he is eager to assert his autonomy and masculinity, whether in pursuing a film career or defying his wife’s suggestions that she work outside the house. Reed Luplau, left, Cole Horibe, Peter...
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In Off-Broadway’s entertaining new “Kung Fu,” playwright David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”) tracks Bruce Lee’s journey from his reckless youth in Hong Kong to his years in Seattle and Los Angeles, and finally back to Lee’s birthplace, where he ultimately became the king of martial arts cinema. The play is having its world premiere at The Pershing Square Signature Center. “Kung Fu” begins in a Seattle dance studio, where the quick-fisted Lee is seen courting new student Linda (Phoebe Strole), a wannabe fighter who will go on to become his wife. “What we study here,” he tells his pupil, is “the art of fighting without fighting.” While that may have been Lee’s philosophy, it’s thankfully not one shared by director Leigh Silverman and Sonya Tayeh, the choreographer from TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” who punctuate Hwang’s sanitized story with a half-dozen martial arts scenes — some humorous, others downright scary. Carrying out their vision is Cole Horibe, a 2012 “SYTYCD” contestant, whose specialty was martial arts fusion. (See his fantastic audition here.) Horibe is trained in jazz, hip-hop, ballet, modern and ballroom, which must’ve made him a lock for a play that blends dance, Chinese opera and martial arts. Hwang’s main themes are the struggles Lee encountered trying to break through in Hollywood, where Asians were portrayed stereotypically, as “villains, enemy soldiers, comic relief,” and his problematic relationship with his father. But the moments where “Kung Fu” comes alive are in the scattered dance and fight scenes, which transpire as a street fight in Hong Kong, or the stylized “Kato Dance,” with its kitschy TV music — Kato, protective sidekick to Van Williams’ “The Green Hornet,” marked the pinnacle of Lee’s modest TV success in America. A fantastic imagined father-son confrontation that occurs when Lee visits his father’s grave showcases the focused talents of Francis Jue, as Lee’s father, Cantonese opera star Lee Hoi-Chuen. Standouts among the ensemble include Peter Kim, first as an awkward pupil in one of Lee’s early martial arts classes, and later, as cocksure “Batman” TV producer William Dozier, who lobbies studio honchos to get Lee cast as Kato. Curiously, the play ends not with Lee’s untimely and still controversial death at 32, but with his departure from...
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Cole Horibe Coming Attraction: Kung Fu Why He’ll Be Big: So You Think You Can Dance star Cole Horibe might be the hottest thing to happen to theater and martial arts in 2014. The trained dancer will flex some martial arts skills as the legendary Bruce Lee in the world premiere of David Henry Hwang’s new Off Broadway play Kung Fu, bowing in February. Early buzz suggests that Horibe might be your new favorite thing — if hunky dancers-turned-stage breakouts are your thing. —Marc Snetiker Original...
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