Chinglish

I don't totally understand how Chinglish ended up on Broadway which I don't mean in a bad way. It's just a little small and specific for a large house, and while it certainly has a lot to recommend it, I didn't find it outstanding enough to fully understand who thought it needed to come to New York in a production this big.

Gary Wilmes plays Daniel, a white American who heads to China to land a job making signs for a new stadium in Guanxing. He lands a British translator who agrees to act as his consultant to land the contract and offers to exploit his contacts with the minister Cai Guoliang to make that happen. There are two major complicating factors. The first is the minister's top aide Xi Yan who seems alternately desirous of sabotaging any possible deal and of making sure it goes through. The second, more thematically important, is that communication across language and cultural barriers proves challenging.

Mistranslation is the theme of the evening and the basis for much of its truly amusing comedy. Angela Lin as an overwhelmed/under-accurate translator in the first scene was the highlight of the show for me. Since much of the show is in Mandarin, the actors seem to have been directed to really oversell everything. Lin best masters acting at full volume while also seeming immediately knowable. As the show goes on, the issue of translation becomes less about words than about concepts--the challenge of crossing cultural barriers not only professionally but personally. Daniel and Xi Yan begin an affair, and through it, we explore the differences between the two as individuals but also as cultural emissaries. The language gags of the early parts of the show give way to meatier emotional issues that lend the show weight. And while the resolution is genuinely moving, I found the play to be a touch unbalanced, never really settling on a tone that felt fully committed.

Still, it's strong material with moments alternately hysterical and deeply affecting. If anything, it felt like a great, great show that should have been one act and run under two hours which could have been done with relatively minimal editing. It's one of those plays that really drives home how artificial the two act structure can feel.

It's nice to see a show hit Broadway that isn't cast with stars. It would have been nicer if I was more fond of the lead actor who felt a bit limited in terms of range, playing the entire show mildly baffled and affable. He's charming, but he never seems to develop very much so his performance just felt really static. I found myself wishing they HAD star cast because I would have loved to see what Jason Segel from Forgetting Sarah Marshall would have been like in the role. If only the producers had called me... Jennifer Lim as Xi Yan fares better. Excellently, in fact. She projects a sincere confidence throughout even when frustrated, angry, or wounded. She plays Xi as a relatively non-expressive woman (at least compared to the mugging going on around her), but she conveys more about her character than anyone else and ends up the emotional and intellectual heart of the show. Which is maybe a touch unfortunate for Wilmes who is so completely outshone.

So in the end...very good. And thoughtful. It just seems not 100% finished, and that's a shame because I think it could have been legitimately great.