Local characters, gags packed in ‘Garage Party’

“Uncle’s Regularly Scheduled Garage Party Is Cancelled Tonight,” a new comedy by Lee Cataluna at Kumu Kahua Theatre, is local to da max, only-in-Hawaii stuff. Typically and topically Cataluna, it’s a tsunami of gags and punchlines about ohana having a good time eating, drinking and making merry. Even if the party was called off.

The characters could come from your own clan or your neighbors. The “types” are rooted in local lore, and by caricaturizing, Cataluna, a Honolulu Star-Advertiser columnist, has created a microcosm of a world of somebodies you either know, recall or maybe would like to forget.

The play suggests that locals are party animals and, cancellation or not, the gang will gather, period.

The mystery, then, is part of the mastery here: Why was the party canceled? No one knows, but Aunty — sick and tired of the regularity — just might hold the clue.

Aunty (Kati Kuroda, effectively threatening, bellowing and intimidating) appears just before the end of Act 1, belittling the partyers, telling all to “go home.” In Act 2 we learn what’s beneath that tough demeanor.

As co-directed by Harry Wong III and Wil Kahele, this play puts community front and center. Act 1 is the setup, with a deliberately slow pace and some predictability. Act 2, which is both riotous and affecting, is snappier, offering a series of strokes of humanity, a panorama of memories and an it-takes-a-village posture to enable the pieces to fit and resolve the puzzle.

Aunty, with her bearlike growls and glaring stink eye, forces the celebrants to dig deep and search their souls to share reflections as they try to appease her and win her over.

Uncle (Wayne Pa‘akaula) and Cubby (Tyler Tanabe) are the congenial singers-guitarists and party hosts, serenading and kibitzing as spectators start to fill the theater. The garage set is a clutter of ice chests of all kinds, a few stools and an old couch. Dried mango branches festooned with Christmas lights hang overhead, and there’s a bunch of junk: a surfboard, a birdhouse, bank storage boxes and more.

Partyers show up, surprised the event is canceled but continuing to haul in trays of food and snacks as they express astonishment. Of course, they stay, they eat, they sing. Like they own the place.

The gathering includes Zanita (Zan Timtim) and her 20-something daughter, Julene (Maile Kapua‘ala), who turn out to have had a difficult past; a gruff cop, JJ (Reb Beau Allen), who lies about appearing on “Hawaii Five-0,” and his cute and more-­mature-than-dad son 3J (Kainoa Kelly, whose mom is the playwright); and a married couple, Ed (Jim Aina) and Lillian (Karen Kuioka Hironaga), who utter thoughts and sentiments simultaneously, with their reflections becoming tall tales as the evening progresses.

Delbert (Eddy Gudoy) has a confessional monologue late in the show that epitomizes the need for connections — to a community, a family, an activity. This isn’t a comic moment; after the guffaws it’s therapy, expressing the notion that need, indeed, comes in different forms.

Cataluna has a keen ear and sharp eye for folkloric details, creating names, acknowledging locations and pinpointing mundane situations to fill her stage canvas with credible color. But because Kumu Kahua does not use microphones on its actors, the dialogue sometimes is lost because of which way the actors are facing in delivery.