“Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”
WHERE: La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Dr. (La Jolla)
WHEN: Tues. – Wed. 7:30 p.m., Thurs. – Sat. 8 p.m., Sat. & Sun. 2 p.m., and Sun. 7 p.m. through Dec. 16
INFO: 858-550-1010
WEB: lajollaplayhouse.org

At times both exhaustive and subtle, La Jolla Playhouse brings The Flaming Lips to the stage in powerful world premiere

By Charlene Baldridge | SDUN Theater Critic

On Sunday, Nov. 18, a headline at Smithsonian.com read: “A Wandering ‘Homeless’ Planet Is Spotted in Deep Space.” It is an orb approximately 100 light years away “that appears to be a planet not associated with any star.”

Could it be the place our heroine goes to battle pink robots?

You remember The Flaming Lips album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”; here Pink Robots are cancerous blood cells bent upon overcoming healthy cells in the young artist Yoshimi’s circulatory system.

This writer admits two things: having researched The Flaming Lips for a feature article, I admire The Lips’ music and lyrics and their ethos, which tells life like it is. Second, I am experienced with cancer warriors and their battles. I could not avoid being profoundly moved by the world-premiere musical “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” written by former La Jolla Playhouse Artistic Director Des McAnuff and Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, with music and lyrics by The Flaming Lips.

The singing of Kimiko Glenn as Yoshimi, Paul Nolan as Ben and Nik Walker as Booker, along with the solid presence of Tom Hewitt as Dr. Petersen, the pathos of Pearl Sun as Yoshimi’s mother, and the ingenious Robots – one of them benign (no pun intended) – conspired to bring this onlooker to her emotional knees from the top of the show. The show began when the young artist Yoshimi – torn between the two men who love her – is diagnosed with a form of leukemia that is usually fatal.

Yoshimi endures cellular and antibody therapies, improving miraculously. The relentless assault of the Pink Robots becomes too heavy, even for a superman like Booker to bear, so he forsakes his love mid-battle. Ben, who has been restrained from hanging out at the hospital, returns, goes home with Yoshimi and sings the lines “You be the earth. I’ll be Your Moon,” in the song “Satellite of You.”

Walker is tall and handsome and has a wonderful vocal range. Glenn is superb in every way, expressing Yoshimi’s range of vulnerability and warrior-like qualities. After seeing and hearing Nolan as Jesus (a role almost impossible to sing) in McAnuff’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” it is a pleasure to hear his true voice. He is also a convincing actor and dancer; choreographer is Bradley Rapier, whose movement vocabulary for the Robots is both frightening and endearing. One wishes Hewitt had more to do, but he helps underpin small ensembles.

Aided by lighting designer Michael Walton and sound designer Steve Canyon Kennedy, puppeteer Basil Twist’s Pink Robots, Robert Brill’s scenic design, Paul Tazewell’s costumes, and Sean Nieuwenhuis’ video and projection design conspire to assure that Yoshimi inhabits a truly spectacular, three-dimensional universe the likes of which are seldom seen, with flying even.

The immense Robot 3000-21 is so appealing one longs to take him home. So is the busy little vacuum bot, which sings, as do all the Robots, lighting up in the mouth area to indicate where the sound and sentiment is coming from. Would that the humans could do the same.

It is easy to forget that the 26 Lips songs and the sounds issue from human lips. The show seems removed by many light years from human emotions, and yet, it moves the emotions.

By the end of act one, the metaphors – robots, the warrior and the battle – have been exhausted far beyond their limits, like a too-long poetic conceit. Then, surprisingly, act two picks up with the evolution (or mutation) of Robot 3000-21 and his love, expressed only by a giant hand on a robotic heart. It was something entirely missed by my companion, proving that it is possible at times, even for immensity, to be too subtle.

Reality is addressed in the final song, “Do You Realize?” in which The Lips pose and answer the most difficult and profound question.