Emotions run high in revival of ‘Ka‘iulani’

They could be students in a missionary school, seven women and a girl dressed in identical prim, wasp-waisted holoku gathered onstage at the opening of "Ka’iulani," Kumu Kahua Theatre’s revival of the play it premiered in 1987. Instead of traditional white, however, the holoku are a radiant orange-gold — the color of alii feather lei — and the members of this Hawaiian Greek chorus strain their stitches in a sexy hula from time to time.

The play, written by Dennis Carroll, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Robert Nelson and Ryan Page, depicts the conflict between the West and Hawaii as embodied by Ka’iulani, the last heir and hope of the Kalakaua monarchy, described by her Scottish father’s friend Robert Louis Stevenson as "the daughter of a double race." It opens with a contemporary student who’s angry with Ka’iulani because "she gave up and died" and wonders whether there was significance in her death.

Much of the play is sung and spoken in Hawaiian, notably Ka’iulani’s genealogy and birth chants fluently delivered by William Ha’o as King Kalakaua and Jason K. Ellinwood as a missionary. Some of the most genuine and moving scenes take place between the precocious child princess, played perfectly by Summer Royal, and her mother, a warm, doting and Sibyl-like Princess Miriam Likelike, portrayed by Karen Kaulana, who was Ka’iulani in the original run.

Likelike touchingly keeps asking her only child, who talks to garden plants, whether she is lonely, only to herself be torn away by death. Both Likelike and Kalakaua burden Ka’iulani with grim prophecies of betrayal and doom. No wonder her father, a loving but weak ally of Kalakaua, spirits her off on a European grand tour.

Three other actresses portray Ka’iulani: Domina Hoffman and Amanda Stone, entwined like ie ie vines, expressing her dual adolescent personality comically at war with itself, and then, gloriously, Danielle Zalopany, who seems to have stepped out of the daguerreotypes of that era with her abundant dark hair, flirtatious laugh, expressive, bruised eyes and regal grace.

Yet Zalopany also shows Ka’iulani’s uncertainty and her bravery in speaking against the annexation in Washington, D.C., against the orders of her aunt, the deposed Queen Lili’uokalani.

"Ka’iulani" takes a different, deeper look than do official histories at the possible rivalry between the queen and the girl who would have succeeded her. In the lovely original score by Warren Cohen, one hears hints of the song "He Inoa no Ka’iulani" ("A Name Song for Ka’iulani"), which the queen wrote during happier times.

Having not seen the 1987 original, this reviewer can’t calibrate how much director Harry Wong III’s version differs. However, for those who remember or have learned about the 1993 centennial of the queen’s overthrow, the apology resolution signed by President Bill Clinton and the ongoing sovereignty debate, many of the historical facts repeated in the script will not shock and resonate as they would have then. Didactic lines such as, "We are a minority in our own land," coupled with declamatory delivery, bog down a 90-minute, intermissionless production with uneven pacing.

But just as one may be thinking that this revival is in need of a revival, Ka’iulani, wild-eyed, recounts her fateful horseback ride through the cold Waimea rain, which prefaced her death in 1899 at age 23, and the production awakens with tempestuous dances and chants that unleash emotions beyond the rim of the near-circular stage.

As theater this seems like a hybrid of traditional historical drama and more open, expressive vehicles such as Ntozake Shange’s 1976 "For Colored Girls." Yet "Ka’iulani" is sure to awaken questions and feelings that will linger beyond the duration of the play.

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CORRECTION: In the play "Ka’iulani" at Kumu Kahua Theatre, Summer Royal played the child princess and Amanda Stone was the other half of the duo who played the teenage Ka’iulani. An earlier version of this review and the version in the Saturday print edition transposed the two actresses and their roles.