"4/5 stars...An evocative and eye-opening excavation of difference and a seductive appeal for greater understanding...Suh’s play excels when Afong and Atung spar directly, moments positioned as asides to Afong’s primary mode of storytelling. It’s easy to wish the pair would break out of their fated repetition for more behind-the-scenes, no-bullshit looks into the muck of performing one’s difference for others’ benefit, and engage with each other and the world more fully. That would also seem by design."
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"The production has lost a good portion of its loveliness with these changes. It has lost its visual tartness and humor, too. Suh’s careful stitching, though, has not pulled loose over the years. He balances workplace comedy — we’ve all worked with an Atung! — and swift, excoriating bitterness with a measuring hand. And Peña again directs beautifully shaped performances from Tyo and Isaac, who have polished their roles to a deep sheen."
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"While Tyo carries the bulk of the play with consummate grace and charisma—growing older and wiser before our eyes—Isaac is a mysterious presence, the true sealed container...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."
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The horrors of foot binding, England’s 17th century incursions into China which led to its preoccupation with tea, and the harrowing 19th Chinese immigrant U.S. experience are among the subjects enacted in playwright Lloyd Suh's sly, moving and theatrical work, The Chinese Lady.
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"Finely directed by Ralph B. Peña, the production is cleverly wrought. Beautifully and symbolically staged in one room, 'The Chinese Lady' builds to the final revelation which is both heartbreaking and hopeful...In the exquisite 'The Chinese Lady,' Suh and Peña use Afong Moy’s perceptions to disclose who we are and who we should be as a nation of immigrants. Kudos to all the creatives who brought this production to its wonderful manifestation as a must-see."
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"The script shows a canny awareness of the difficulties of dramatizing this history...Suh, smartly, doubles down on this discomfort, casting the audience as exhibition attendees whom Moy directly addresses...Shannon Tyo delivers a sensitive and disciplined performance...Tyo’s counterpart, Daniel K. Isaac, is a gifted comedic performer, but his broad, winking passive aggression cuts against the emotional weight of later scenes...Ultimately, it is Tyo’s Moy who turns 'The Chinese Lady' into a rich and challenging evening of theater."
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"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...When she realizes she will have to do that utterly on her own — breaking out of the box where American culture wants to keep her, under its hostile gaze — she becomes a roiling force of indignation and self-determination. That happens in the play’s penultimate scene, and Tyo absolutely kills it. So it’s unfortunate that the final scene undermines her with ill-conceived design."
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"There are aspects of 'The Chinese Lady' that feel a little too didactic. The last 15 minutes, for instance, are a bit on the nose for a play that had spent the prior hour trusting the audience enough to get the point without explaining things so granularly. But these qualms aren't enough to wreck the overall experience: excellently acted and beautifully built, 'The Chinese Lady' is an eminently worthy piece of theater that deserves as wide an audience as possible."
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