Chinglish

Goodman Theatre, Chicago

(312) 443-3800

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Times have certainly changed since “America’s premier chronicler of East-West relationships” created the work that made him famous, said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. David Henry Hwang wrote his Tony-winning drama M. Butterfly in 1988, when China was a lumbering giant and its inhabitants were often stereotyped in the West as submissive. By contrast, Hwang’s “shrewd, timely, and razor-sharp” new comedy dramatizes a present-day mingling of the cultures in which the balance of power has shifted decidedly to the East. This time, the struggling owner of a Cleveland sign-making company, played by James Waterston, finds himself in a provincial Chinese city and very much beholden to the whims of two potential clients—the city’s culture minister (Larry Zhang) and young vice minister (Jennifer Lim). The world “has been turned on its head.”

Waterston’s negotiations with the officials pave the way for “a complex roundelay” of misunderstandings, said Mary Houlihan in the Chicago Sun-Times. In translation, his character’s “My hands are tied” becomes an eyebrow-raising reference to being in “bondage,” and “unforeseen problems befuddle his dealings at every turn.” At times, Chinglish threatens to become a one-joke “lost in translation” comedy. But Hwang consistently displays “a sharp eye for presenting Chinese culture in all its complexity” and an equally keen sense of its potential for friction with American ideals.

The play is executed so well, it almost doesn’t matter that the dialogue contains nearly as much Mandarin as English, said Steven Oxman in Variety. Hwang’s “just-twisty-enough story” is as expertly produced as it is performed. Lim is the real standout—as the “not so loyal” vice minister, she embodies better than anyone else on stage the notion that it takes a lot more than a few language lessons to understand what’s driving her country’s economic surge. Here’s hoping she makes the journey to New York this fall when this play moves to Broadway. Through July 24