Review Roundup: THE CHINESE LADY at the Public Theater

Ma-Yi Theater Company is presenting THE CHINESE LADY at The Public Theater. The Chinese Lady is written by Lloyd Suh and Directed by Ralph B. Peña. The Chinese Lady runs through Sunday, April 10, 2022.

The full cast includes Daniel K. Isaac (Atung) and Shannon Tyo (Afong Moy). Both are reprising their roles from the 2018 Ma-Yi Theater Company production at Beckett Theater (Theater Row).

Inspired by the true story of the first Chinese woman to step foot in America, Lloyd Suh's critically-acclaimed play, The Chinese Lady, is a tale of dark poetic whimsy and a unique portrait of the United States as seen through the eyes of a young Chinese girl. In 1834, 16-year-old Afong Moy sailed into New York Harbor and was immediately put on display for a paying public who were mesmerized by her exotic ways and horrified by her tiny bound feet. As audiences follow Moy's travels through America as a living exhibit for decades, The Chinese Lady shares her impressions of a young country struggling with how to define itself.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

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Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Times: "Thank you for coming to see me," she says to her gawkers, who are also us: the audience at The Public Theater, watching Lloyd Suh's play "The Chinese Lady," a moving and often sharply funny riff on the story of the real Afong Moy, traversing 188 years of American ugliness and exoticization in 90 swift, heightened minutes. A two-hander, it hopes with all its battered heart that we will, by the end, see Afong in her full humanity, and through her see this nation with clearer eyes. But it is not optimistic.

David Cote, Observer: While The Chinese Lady touches on tragedy, the overall mode is wry and comic. It unfolds as a series of tense but humorous interactions between Moy and her translator/handler, the gently mocking Atung (Daniel K. Isaac). Atung is a placid factotum whose serene exterior masks chaotic depths and lifelong disappointment. There's a hint of Beckett's Endgame in the prickly master-servant rapport between Moy and Atung, the latter constantly moving tables and props around the physically restricted star attraction, drawling campy asides à la Tim Gunn. As in the recent transcultural play English, characters code switch to indicate when they're speaking English with an accent or their own tongue. Or, in Moy's case, her inner monologue.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: "The Chinese Lady" is at its best when examining the nature of the theater. The Chinese Lady presented to American audiences back in the 19th century was no more representative of the real Moy than the actor playing her on The Public Theater stage. Here, "The Chinese Lady" is blessed with the amazing performance of Shannon Tyo, who seamlessly segues between two Asian tropes that Sun explores: the submissive Lotus Blossom and the steely Dragon Lady.

Jesse Oxfeld, New York Stage Review: In The Chinese Lady, in other words, history finally reckons with what this country did to Afong Moy. She finally gets a chance to tell her story. But, yet again, it's not really her story that she's telling, and it makes for a less than fully fulfilling evening.

Melissa Rose Bernardo, New York Stage Review: Directed by Ralph B. Peña, Suh's play is largely an extended interior monologue, in which Afong shares everything she is unable to with her actual paying audience. Those people, she says, have paid to see "things that are exotic, and foreign, and unusual": things such as walking (very slowly, as her feet have been bound from age 4), eating with chopsticks, and pouring and drinking tea in an almost ceremonial manner.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: I admired this play when Ma-Yi Theater put it on for a too-brief run in November, 2018, and I feel the same way now that they've brought "The Chinese Lady," with the same terrific two-person cast, Shannon Tyo and Daniel K. Isaac, to The Public Theater through April 10. Although little more than three years has passed, the production is now being performed in what amounts to a different era - a time when the play's already rich metaphors have acquired some new and poignant layers.

Naveen Kumar, New York Theatre Guide: The Chinese Lady goes beyond an indictment of the imperial gaze, peering through the space that allows someone to be considered an other and asking what it's made of. Ignorance, yes. But also curiosity, desire, and a wish to understand. With any hope, that's also what brings people to the theatre.

David Cote, The Observer: Matching Suh's delicate blend of dry wit and poetic melancholy, director Ralph B. Peña crafts a lucid and vibrant production around the two magnetic central performances. The Chinese Lady is ultimately a sincere mediation on the act of looking as a way to know something or someone, to break through ethnic clichés or blinding prejudice. It makes you wonder-hope-that even in the bad old days of 1834, some American looking hard at this foreign girl in a strange land could see a bit of themselves.

Photo credit: Joan Marcus

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