The Chinese Lady
Lloyd Suh
The Pear Theatre
A young girl barely fourteen dressed and in make-up of her traditional, royal Chinese background sits in a small room surrounded by reminders of her Chinese heritage. With sparkling personality and sweet smile, she tells us that while her lips are moving, she is not speaking; that the words we hear are not hers; and that the body, clothes, room we see … do not exist. “What is happening is a performance; my whole life is a performance. … I am intended to be representative of The China Lady … I am unlike any lady to ever live.”
For well over fifty years, Afong Moy lived a life in a “room unlike any room in China,” having arrived in New York in 1834 as the first known Chinese woman brought here by the owners of Far East Oriental Imports in order to “educate and entertain” ticket-paying American audiences about China. Her true life lived for decades mostly on daily display and is the basis for Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady, now in a fascinating, initially humorous, and eventually eye-opening and disturbing production at The Pear Theatre with important messages and implications for 2024. Searing performances soar by the lead character, Afong (Joann Wu, alternating performances with Eiko Moon-Yamamoto) and her constant, performance companion and translator, Atung (Joseph Alvarado). The adept direction of Wynne Chan ensures slight glimpses, shudders, and gazes of the twosome deliver entire treatises of non-spoken but important meanings of cultural and immigrant significance.
The Pear’s The Chinese Lady joins Berkeley Rep’s just-closed The Far Country and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s planned The Heart Sellers in providing Bay Area audiences much proof that Lloyd Suh is one of this country’s most important, living playwrights as he writes new works concerning AAPI/Caucasian interactions and relations in the U.S. – both historical and current
For the rest of my review, please visit Talkin’Broadway.
Rating: 5 E
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
The Chinese Lady continues May 9, 11, and 12, 2024, in a 90-minute (no intermission) production and in repertory with A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters (May 10 and 11) at The Pear Theatre, 1110 La Avenida, Suite A, Mountain View, CA. Tickets are available at www.thepear.org .
Photo Credit: Caitlin Stone-Collogne
