Stage and Cinema says The Chinese Lady is “a whisper that lingers long after curtain”.
“Humor in The Chinese Lady isn’t a break from the heaviness—it’s a mechanism of survival.”
“Director Shinshin Yuder Tsai leans into that duality—spectacle and intimacy—framing Afong’s presence as both literal exhibition and quiet revolt.”
“There’s a lightness to Tsai’s touch, especially in the early scenes, where the script’s vaudevillian pulse is echoed in the rhythm of the performances. But beneath that surface buoyancy is a slow, deliberate unlayering.”
“His direction lets time stretch and buckle, sliding effortlessly across decades to reflect Afong’s internal unraveling.”
“Christopher Scott Murillo’s set stages that tension with brutal clarity.”
“Michelle Krusiec plays Afong with a poise that frays by degrees.”
“By the time the audience has settled into her rhythm, she’s already begun to break it.”
“He [Albert Park] stops bridging cultures and starts erasing one. By the end, he looks like someone still smiling only because he’s forgotten how not to.”
“What lingers isn’t any single image. It’s the play’s strange relationship with time.”
“It doesn’t feel like a timeline. It feels like a haunting.”
“She is there to be looked at, yes, but the brilliance of Suh’s script is how that gaze boomerangs. Eventually, she’s looking back.”
“This is one of those rare evenings in the theater that rearranges something inside you.”
“This isn’t a history play. It plays like Brechtian estrangement inverted. We don’t grow distant from the drama to observe it critically. Instead, the drama refuses to let us leave.”
“I thought I came to observe. But I was part of the exhibit the entire time.”
Read the latest review of The Chinese Lady from Stage and Cinema HERE.
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