Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1975: Garage-psych band the Cyclos mount the stage and rouse the crowd with their signature song, “Jeas Cyclo,” the local term for cycle-rickshaws. The quintet—vocalist Sothea (Brooke Ishibashi), guitarist Chum (Joe Ngo), bassist Leng (Tim Liu), drummer Rom (Abraham Kim), and keyboardist-percussionist Pou (Jane Lui, who also serves as one of the show’s music supervisors) are fictional, dreamed up by playwright Lauren Yee for her play Cambodian Rock Band. Fans of Cambodian rock music, however, know Yol Aularong originally wrote and recorded the song.

Yee’s band of actor-musicians may be fictitious, but they are solid—the play’s original director Chay Yew has reunited four of the five Cyclos from the 2018 premiere at California’s South Coast Repertory. Ishibashi’s gorgeous singing voice is matched by her presence behind the mic, undulating her body and shaking a tambourine in one classic-rock frontperson gesture after another; Ngo plays serpentine lead guitar with a fuzzed-out tone; Jane Lui’s keyboard melodies are hypnotic; and Liu and Kim are a propulsively syncopated rhythm section. The repertoire is a mixture of vintage Cambodian rock songs by the aforementioned Aularong, Ros Serey Sothea (for whom Ishibashi’s Sothea is named), and Sinn Sisamouth, along with songs by Los Angeles-based Dengue Fever, whose “One-Thousand Tears of a Tarantula,” “Uku,” and “Sni Bong” are particular highlights, even if anachronistically represented as music of another era. The Cyclos are appropriately clad in psychedelic paisleys, floral, and animal patterns by costume designer Linda Cho, colors constantly shifting under David Weiner’s lighting design.

Duch (Francis Jue), a smartly dressed music enthusiast steps up to the stage and presents himself as master of ceremonies, offering a brief slide show that introduces Cambodian Rock Band’s two themes: During the 1960s and early ’70s, Cambodia was home to a vibrant rock scene that melded local musical traditions with the foreign music heard over U.S. Armed Forces Radio; and, that from 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the Cambodian genocide—roughly 1.5 to 3 million people, a quarter of the small nation’s population, were either executed or died in labor camps from overwork and malnutrition.  

In 2008, Neary (also played by Ishibashi), a Cambodian American war crimes investigator, uncovers evidence that there may have been an eighth previously unknown survivor of the S-21 prison (in reality there are seven known adults and five children who survived). The unknown survivor could serve as a witness in the trial of the war criminal known as “Comrade Duch.” Seemingly by coincidence, her father, a now much older Cyclos guitarist Chum, has chosen this time to return to Phnom Penh to visit—despite fears that local authorities might be former Khmer Rouge. What follows are repeated dad jokes and hijinks in which Neary attempts to hide the fact that she is dating her Thai Canadian co-worker, Ted (Tim Liu again).

However, coincidences are rare in theater: Chum has come to stop Neary from digging any further into the S-21 archive and the farce is just a misdirection. Sometime between the Cyclos’ last performance and his escape to America, Chum was that eighth survivor of S-21 whom Neary had been trying to identify. Like many survivors, Chum feels guilt just for being alive, and has been reluctant to tell his story since he escaped 30 years prior.

Unlike the MC in John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joe Masteroff’s Cabaret, Comrade Duch is not fictitious, but rather the chosen nom de guerre of Kaing Guek Eav (sometimes stylized as Kang Kek Iew). In 2007, he was the first Khmer Rouge leader to be prosecuted by the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia. Duch was not merely the commandant of S-21 (originally built as a school, it’s now the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide), but the head of the Khmer Rouge’s internal security branch. Of the prisoners who passed through S-21, Duch stood accused of personally overseeing the torture of more than 15,000, and the execution of more than 12,000. In 2010, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity, torture, and murder. Unlike his comrades and fellow defendants, he admitted to his crimes, and, having reportedly converted to Evangelical Christianity during the 1990s, asked for forgiveness. Two years after Cambodian Rock Band‘s 2018 premiere, he died while serving a life sentence. Prosecutors were helped by a vast archive of evidence: A former schoolteacher, Duch had left a meticulously handwritten paper trail of his orders, annotated prisoner lists, and had both prisoners and their corpses photographed for his files.

While the beatings and electroshock portrayed in the play were common tortures in S-21, so were waterboarding and rape. Some tortures were even more gruesome: Prisoners were vivisected without anesthetic for medical training and experiments; others were completely drained of their blood so it could be used for transfusions for soldiers. It makes you wonder: If Yee had gone into greater detail about the realities of S-21, could the character of Duch have still come across as so affably amoral in his MC role? 

As Cambodian Rock Band’s two antagonists, Jue and Ngo demonstrate an extraordinary talent of transformation as they play the different facets of their characters across decades. One sees Jue switch between the energetically charismatic MC to hands-on commandant, to a fatigued fugitive from justice and eventual criminal defendant. Ngo’s Chum, on the other hand, moves from passionate young rocker to a survivor who has concocted a silly sitcom dad persona to avoid being noticed by those who once tormented him and murdered his friends and family. There is a remarkable scene in which Duch and Chum confront one another in a liminal stage space and Jue and Ngo age their characters three decades in just seconds using only facial gestures and posture. In an age of AI-generated imagery, Jue and Ngo remind us that acting is the original special effect.

Just as they had with the writers, artists, and scholars, the Khmer Rouge killed most of Cambodia’s musicians, regardless of whether they played traditional or modern music. Recordings only survived if they were kept hidden. The music remained largely unknown to the rest of the world until the 1996 release of Cambodia Rocks, an album compiled by American Paul Wheeler from tapes he purchased as a tourist two years earlier. The music was an exciting discovery to listeners around the world, but none of the artists were identified in that first release. It would take years of detective work by fans and music bloggers to identify them, and fans would be chilled to realize every one of them had been murdered. David Bowie may have cried out, “This ain’t rock ’n’ roll, this is genocide!” on 1974’s Diamond Dogs, but Yee makes the case that the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the first genocide of the rock ’n’ roll era.

I have been a fan of Cambodian rock for the better part of a decade, and have no doubt that Yee is an even greater fan. Even if the themes of the songs (whether sung in Khmer or in English) don’t connect strongly with the story, the visceral experience of seeing them performed live perhaps communicates to those without a connection to Cambodian culture, in a way statistics rarely do, that something uniquely and joyfully beautiful was murdered. This is an important reminder, when as recently as July 13, 2023, the streaming educational service Masterclass announced that a foremost denier of the Cambodian Genocide, Noam Chomsky, is one of their newest teachers.

Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band, with songs by Dengue Fever, Yol Aularong, Ros Serey Sothea, Sinn Sisamouth, and Bob Dylan, is directed by Chay Yew and runs through August 27 at Arena Stage. arenastage.org. $66–$105.