CITIZEN KIM. No, not CITIZEN KANE, the legendary Orson Welles film that boasts to be the best US film of all time, but the play about a Korean struggling to get a green card to remain in the US and continue his American Dream which AAIFF had chosen for this year's Screenplay Reading. Despite the predictability of the plot which undoubtedly stems from bad Asian Dramas (main character gets him or herself into a crisis, main character needs to get married to solve this crisis, main character finds asshole to marry, main character hates asshole but still gets married and vice versa, main character finds out there is more to asshole, main character and asshole fall in love—queue gag reflex), the lines in CITIZEN KIM are so original and so laugh-out-loud-like-a-hyena funny that I forgave the similarities of the plot to FULL HOUSE and PRINCESS HOURS (two awesomely bad Korean Dramas that I couldn't stop watching) and countless other melodramatic Asian Dramas. I mean, when Ronald Kim recalls testing out a home built mini roller-coaster as a child which resulted in his pet hamster's death, I don't think I could breathe for a good minute because I was laughing so hard. And the idea of a nacho sundae? What can anyone really to say to that?

The hilarity of the lines was not all that captivated me, it was also the actors who were so into the script that I couldn't help but also be carried away by their performances. Needless to say, I will be first in line to see the full production which will be staged by Mr. Miyagi's Stage Company. With my nacho sundae in hand...okay, not really but still, the idea is grossly enticing, much like the play itself.