Review: My Man Kono, the Story of Charlie Chaplin’s Valet, an Alleged Spy for Japan

In many ways, Toraichi Kono was the ideal immigrant: clever, resourceful, and willing to flout orthodoxy in pursuit of his dream. His tenacity and reliability led him to become right-hand man to Charlie Chaplin, a fellow immigrant who became Hollywood’s biggest player in the silent movie era. These are the kind of people America has always attracted, and we would not be exceptional without them. So how is it that Kono got swept up in an alleged spy ring passing sensitive naval information to Imperial Japan, leading to his detention, which persisted years after the war had ended?

That question is at the heart of Philip W. Chung’s My Man Kono, now making its world premiere off-Broadway with Pan Asian Repertory Theatre. It’s a fascinating and distinctively American story about a figure from our cultural history we should know better. Chung clearly put a lot of work into researching Kono’s life—and unfortunately, we can feel that in every scene.

Chung frames the first act as a meeting between Kono (Brian Lee Huynh) and his attorney, Wayne Collins (Robert Meksin). It’s 1947 and Kono is still in detention without charges. Collins would like to review and clarify his deposition ahead of a crucial deportation hearing. Kono recounts how he met his wife Isami (Kiyo Takami), how he charmed his way past immigration in Seattle in 1903, and how he and Isami decamped for “small town” Los Angeles in 1916, chasing opportunity in the nascent film industry. Initially hired as a chauffeur for up-and-coming star Charlie Chaplin (Conlan Ledwith), he quickly became the tramp’s indispensable majordomo.

As Kono tells the story, ghosts of the past emerge from the corners and crevices of Sheryl Liu’s gray, somewhat brutalist set, the big bare walls of which make an excellent screen for Cinthia Chen’s transformative projections. They wear Karen Boyer’s period(ish) costumes, flickering celluloid memories that become flesh and blood under Asami Morita’s surprisingly simple yet cinematic lighting.

We see Alva Blake (Cody LeRoy Wilson), the no-talent actor who would go on to accuse Kono of colluding with Japanese naval officer Itaru Tachibana (Jae Woo). We also meet Paulette Goddard (Emma Kikue), the latest woman in Chaplin’s life, whose clashes with Kono led to his dismissal. Kono is a man haunted by exposition—much like this play.

That condition doesn’t change much in Act 2, when My Man Kono becomes a courtroom drama, with Ledwith (who had played Chaplin) taking on the role of judge and Takami (who played Kono’s late wife) becoming a federal prosecutor. A cascade of names, dates, and direct quotes pours down on the stage as we try to make sense of a story that is still shrouded in a fair amount of intrigue.

Understandably, Chung attempts to cut through that fog by presenting the most charitable spin on his protagonist: He was an upstanding guy whose Japanese sense of honor and discretion sucked him into Tachibana’s plot, which was mostly entrapment by the FBI and its racist informant, Blake.

Huynh does his part by giving a sympathetic performance of a man doing his best to keep his head above water as multiple forces (work, family obligation, bigotry) weigh him down. Ledwith’s memorable turn as a maniacal, completely self-involved boss surely helps. This is Charlie Chaplin as Miranda Priestly, crystalized in Ledwith’s cruel smile.

We know Blake is a baddie from the moment Wilson steps onstage and asks Kono for a light. Rebuked, he retorts, “Buddha forbids cigarettes or something?” There is never any doubt that Blake is the dumbest kind of villain. Similarly, James Patrick Nelson plays FBI agent Horn with forced menace, pitching his voice down an octave to deliver cringe-inducing lines like, “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you’re deported back to Japan faster than Emperor Hirohito can shit rice.” If this was panto, we’d boo-hiss.

Just as it’s not the actors’ fault their characters are written the way they are, director Jeff Liu deserves little blame for a play that feels simultaneously flat and overstuffed, staging a tight production that comes in at just under two hours. Even as the script circles the runway looking for a way to conclude on a profound note, there’s little dead air.

Still, I suspect My Man Kono makes for a better read than a watch. Its flurry of primary sources feels like the beginning of a long-overdue biography of a figure who embodies both the promise and precarity of immigrant life in America.