Theatre Review: Chinglish

David Henry Hwang’s newest is more slight than satirical

Jennifer Lim and Gary Wilmes. Photo: Michael McCabe

(chĭng’glĭsh)

(adj.) Of or relating to a language in which both English and Chinese words are used together in order to express a meaning.

In the Broadway premiere of Chinglish, David Henry Hwang blends English and Mandarin in an attempt to express that East-West relations are as complex as the languages themselves. Not exactly an earth-shattering revelation — Hwang already covered this ground 23 years ago, more compellingly, with M. Butterfly — this new play is more fluff than substance.

Springing from the author’s personal experiences in China over the past five years, Chinglish follows American businessman Daniel Cavanaugh (Gary Wilmes, the only new cast member since the premiere in Chicago, is more earnest than engaging) who  desperately seeks to score a lucrative deal for his family’s sign-making firm as he travels to China. Of course along the way he manages to fall for Xi Yan, the sharp businesswoman (a sexy-shrewd Jennifer Lim) who isn’t as honest or good as she insists him to be.

Chinglish has a light touch: the comedy almost entirely consist of redundant mistranslations (Shawn Duan’s subtitle projections are nicely clear-cut) that never quite have any bite to them, and are all drawn out indulgently. One of few comic bits not riffing on language barriers — a group of Chinese businessmen fawn over Daniel  for his involvement in the Enron scandal (which they not-so-hilariously admire) — drags on for well over ten minutes in which the Chinese inquire about each head of Enron. Moments like this add up to a production that is overlong and yet still doesn’t say enough: While the  comedy needs trimming, the characters need filling out.

For the most part, director Leigh Silverman keeps the pace quick, but with so many lost-in-translation moments, it all feels a bit sitcom-y. David Korins’s slick-yet-purposefully-bland set only adds the overall indulgence of the production: On a double turntable, it’s an overly complicated puzzle that never stops moving, as though to inspire awe when its pieces finally converge to form a new location. It’s distracting, and the “scenes” that Silverman creates, in a well-meaning attempt to justify the time spent while the set spins and conjoins, are just plain silly. Darron L. West’s “hip” Chinese pop-rap soundtrack at least keeps the energy up while the set slows things down.

Critics so largely enjoyed the show (and it impressed in its world premiere at the Goodman as well) that I have to think it’s partially due to the rarity of comedies on Broadway these days. And, honestly, who isn’t rooting for Hwang? But with thematic ground that has been covered and jokes stretched as thin as rice vermicelli, Chinglish doesn’t translate to much.

Chinglish by David Henry Hwang opened on October 27, 2011 for an open-ended Broadway run.
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th Street
New York, NY 10036

Theatre Review: The Mountaintop

Sam Jackson as MLK tries to elevate the less-than-impressive The Mountaintop

Samuel L. Jackson as Martin Luther King, Jr. in THE MOUNTAINTOP. Photo credit: Joan Marcus.

What is most striking about The Mountaintop — a new play that re-imagines Martin Luther King Jr.’s final night before he was assassinated — is how little we get to know King. According to Hall, and to all of the press about the show (and there’s been a lot), that’s entirely the point — to get to know the man, not the legend.

But that King the man remains a mystery long after the curtain lowers is only one of many disappointments in this 90-minute two-hander by 30-year-old African American playwright Katori Hall. She’s the Hot New Playwright of the Moment: her collection of Memphis-set plays, echoing August Wilson’s cycle of Pittsburgh plays, was published last month, and while this one currently runs on Broadway, another, Hurt Village, preps for its off-Broadway bow at Signature Theatre. And, of course, her Mountaintop bested Tony-nominated Jerusalem for the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play.

Hall wrote The Mountaintop in 2007 when she was just 26, making few changes to the script since then — and, quite frankly, it shows. The play is set on April 3, 1968, when MLK retires to room 306 in the Memphis’s Lorraine Motel following his legendary “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech delivered to a church congregation of more than 3,000. Hall’s attempts at “humanizing” the icon include showing him urinating (off-stage, of course), indulging in some liquor and cigarettes, flirting shamelessly with the maid and –SPOILER ALERT! (not really) — depicting him as a regular joe with super-smelly feet. Yep, lots of controversial/enlightening stuff here.

Sadly, it doesn’t get more insightful than that. When a young (ahem, Angela Bassett) and pretty chambermaid arrives to bring King his coffee, there’s a lot — and by “a lot” I mean the entire show — of silly, shallow banter between the two about the benefits of Pall Malls, jokes about the Beatles and even a pillow fight. Yes: a pillow fight. At the halfway mark, Hall springs a “twist” on us that isn’t all that surprising, and in fact, is fairly predictable. As requested by the show’s press rep, I won’t reveal what it is, but let’s just say it’s less inspired than it is sentimental, aiming to depict King’s great fear of his own mortality and desperate longing to “pass the baton on” — and also, to showcase a super-neat trick of David Gallo’s impeccably recreated motel room set.

Angela Bassett as Camae in the new play THE MOUNTAINTOP. Photo Credit: Joan Marcus.

But with all this Big Broadway Buzz, surely the much talked-about performances elevate the mediocre work, right? Eh, not exactly. Gorgeous as ever, 53-year-old Angela Bassett — the script calls for a twentysomething girl — plays chambermaid Camae. Meant to draw King out — at the play’s start, he’s very much inside his head, working on that last, great speech — Camae chats and flirts incorrigibly, mostly about nothing and rarely allowing “Preacher Kang” a moment to interject (much like Bassett’s forced performance, her Memphis twang is affected). With many theatre credits, including the Broadway premiere of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Bassett has no excuse — and director Kenny Leon (Fences) even less for allowing it — for playing so broadly, shuffling and twitching across the stage as though performing in a minstrel show. When it’s obvious that an actor is working, hard, to “react” to everything said and done onstage, it’s a painful and exhaustingly frustrating experience. “If you don’t look at her while she’s talking, she’s not as bad,” my companion whispered helpfully to me about twenty minutes in.

Unfortunately, Bassett’s performance is such a train wreck that I couldn’t look away, nor could I focus on the much more natural and effective performance of Samuel L. Jackson as King. The 62-year-old is neither the right age (MLK was just 39 when he was killed), nor does he really resemble the legend, either in appearance or voice. But Jackson knows King in a way an age-appropriate actor never could — he participated in the marches, attended many of his speeches, even ushered at his funeral — and with solid theatre credits under his belt, albeit a bit rusty (his only Broadway credit is as understudy for the premiere of The Piano Lesson in 1990, and he originated other of Wilson’s roles at Yale Rep), he has a natural and easy way about him onstage.

When Jackson enters room 306, rain-soaked and coughing with cold, we watch with curiosity as goes through the motions of King unwinding after a long day. Unbuttoning his collar and removing his shoes, calling his wife and children to say goodnight, working on his next speech — practicing the tone and inflection of each line, each word. But instead of developing King from there, he remains largely stagnant, playing second banana to Camae. Jackson’s thoughtful, unshowy performance is swallowed whole by Bassett’s play for easy laughs, and it isn’t until the final scene, when he gives that famous Mountaintop speech, that we glimpse what could have been: Jackson as King, fighting to hold back his motions and his own mortality, as we know him and want to remember him, preaching, powerfully, about finding that Promised Land.

When it comes down to it, what does The Mountaintop actually offer? Do we need, or even want, to see King as a flawed man? Let me put it another way: Would you rather see a play about August Wilson or August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean? As fine as Samuel L. Jackson is, I’d rather see King speak and learn about the movement he dedicated his life to.

Theatre Review: Milk Like Sugar

Kirsten Greenidge’s new play is neither milk or sugar –
It’s something altogether better

Full Disclosure: I saw Milk Like Sugar in its very first preview at Playwrights Horizons on October 13, but as this co-production with Women’s Project Theater and La Jolla Playhouse transferred from the latter where it received its world premiere in August, it doesn’t seem entirely inappropriate to review it. Even less so because it’s an entirely solid, engaging production.

Angela Lewis, Nikiya Mathis and Cherise Boothe

Sixteen-year-old Annie and her two spunky high school BFFs crave something more than the powdered milk that sits on their shelves — the milk that tastes sweet like sugar, but offers little sustenance. But these couture-obsessed girls in their leopard-print leggings and sparkly sweat suits (costumed perfection by Toni-Leslie James), with their slide phones and incessant sexting, have more interest in tattoos than textbooks. Their attempts to become strong like “lions” result in a pregnancy pact (remember when those were frighteningly fashionable?) and an inked flame on Annie’s hip that sparks a burning desire that only grows stronger as the tattoo grows more elaborate and all-consuming (and Justin Townsend’s lighting and Andre Pluess’s sound design, otherwise nicely effective, becomes wearily redundant).

If this sounds like an overabundance of metaphors, you’re likely right. Ambitious playwright Kirsten Greenidge packs it all into one play: developing womanhood, female bonds and familial issues, socioeconomic constraints, the escapism of evangelism, brand as status, etc. You can’t help but think that these girls — bubbly, pink-clad and already preggers Margie (a hilariously warm and vacuous Nikiya Mathis); aggressive and defensive alpha-female, Talisha (a fierce Cherise Boothe); the thoughtful, but conflicted Annie (Angela Lewis, both sensitive and stubborn) — may represent varying shades of the playwright herself. But of course that doesn’t matter: when the climactic confrontation explodes between Annie and her hardened, bone-weary “moms” (Tonya Pinkins, who, with a Marlboro perpetually hanging from her dry lips, is like a pot of water you watch in nervous fear of just when it will boil over and burn you), the universality of this tremendously detailed piece is made all the more apparent (who doesn’t have mom issues?).

This is not to say that this piece is merely by a woman, about women, for women: Tattoo artist Antwoine (a charismatic LeRoy McClain) and astronomy-lover Malik (J. Mallory-McCree, warm and charming) are central to Annie’s self-discovery, even as they discover themselves through the course of the piece. Sure, they could each use more of a resolution — as could Keera (a loveably awkward Adrienne C. Moore), whose self-denial about her own family and life happiness is funneled into religious escapism — but with so much else going on, and going on so well, it almost seems silly to nitpick. The subject is a tad bit Lifetime-y — and hey, been there, done that — but Greenidge’s punchy drama has power, and the playwright possesses such a knack for language, effortlessly and hilariously fusing urban colloquy with lyricism. Director Rebecca Taichman, with the help of Mimi Lien’s stark and slick set, for the most part stages both the humorous and heavy at a quick pace and top-40 soundtrack that even her ADD, teenaged characters could appreciate.

Unhappily, I couldn’t get the excessively-used Beyonce’s “Run the World (Girls)” out of my head for a full 24 hours after the show. Happily, though, neither could I forget  the top-notch cast and Greenidge’s smart, hip and ambitious work. This super-promising talent won’t be “emerging” for long.

Theatre Review: Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling

Adam Rapp attacks the upper-middle class in this new Albee-esque surrealist drama

Reed Birney as Dr. Bertram Cabot , Christine Lahti as Sandra Cabot, Betsy Aidem as Celeste Von Stofenberg, Shane McRae as James Von Stofenberg and Katherine Waterston as Cora Cabot in Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling. Photo: Kevin Thomas Garcia.

Charles Isherwood is done with Adam Rapp, but I’m not — not even after the disappointing Atlantic Theater Company production of the prolific playwright’s bizarrely shallow Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling. 

The set-up of Rapp’s latest — two monied families welcome home one of their ilk from a swanky psychiatric hospital — promises the dinner-table drama of August: Osage County with apocalyptic Hitchcockian wild geese. Potentially, it’d be everything you love/hate about a Rappian drama, only this time set in an opulent Connecticut home rather than a squalid motel/hallway/basement: The play’s inhabitants would be just as verbally violent, its plot equally dark and desperate with just enough over-the-top Albee-ian absurdism to mix things up a bit.

And to an extent it’s exactly that: a feisty, Chanel-clad Christine Lahti nails the sharply tongued matriarch who plots the death of her slightly-dopey, but well-intentioned husband (Reed Birney, excellent as always) while also aggressively pursuing an affair with an old family friend (Cotter Smith); an unamused African-American maid (an embarrassingly underutilized Quincy Tyler Bernstine) is condescendingly “educated” by her employers, who uncomfortably (for us) force her to perform Shakespearean sonnets upon demand; the disturbed golden child (Shane McRae), who jumped off a building for no clear reason, nonchalantly chats about his internet friendship with a 14-year-old Iraqi terrorist; and there may or may not be an actual lion chained in the basement (not-so-much-of-a-spoiler alert: there is a lion chained in the basement. And since there’s no props manager listed, I’ll give kudos to set designers Andrew Boyce & Takeshi Kata for the very life-like lioness).

While half of the dagger-like dialogue is deliciously, breezily witty, the other is synthetic and forced — having so-oft written for society’s misfits, Rapp’s colorful verbiage at times feels out of place with the well-to-do. In addition, the play’s many symbols — lions and pterodactyls and geese (oh my) — and sonnets and story lines are largely unsubstantiated. They keep adding up — and director Neil Pepe keeps it all moving along at a nice clip — but they never really amount to anything. When it’s good, it’s great (the raucous sex scene between the two unhappy progeny), but too often it’s not: the usually down-and-dirty Rapp has his white gloves on, and he simply isn’t as shocking in Chanel.

But what’s glaringly missing is the heart that typically pulses a layer (or five or ten) beneath the surface of Rapp’s work (such as in The Hallway Trilogy). In Dreams, none of the characters are explored fully and we’re only allowed to view them from a distance: Lahti’s Sandra is just a rich bitch, and Katherine Waterston’s damaged daughter comes off as just an oddball artist (through no fault of Waterston’s). The one soul we can sympathize with is Dirk Von Stofenberg, the banker dad in black blazer and red dockers with Madoff-like troubles. As Dirk, Cotter Smith treads more softly and subtly than the rest of this loquacious party, radiating equal parts charm and defeat. When he makes that sole, life-altering sacrifice, you feel the weight of his decision and realize that — that care — was what was missing all along.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with Dreams, but it doesn’t have anything new to say, either. So while I’d hate to discourage Rapp from tackling different locales and tax brackets, let’s leave the icy chandeliers and cruel upper-class to that master of the absurd, Albee.

I much prefer those damaged souls in the damp basement with their dark deeds any day.