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| Hsieh (Xi Yan) and Whitfield (Daniel) /Brunk |
by MK Scott
As a fan of both the film and play of Hwang's M. Butterfly, I was curious to see any of his other works, and of course Artswest, who are in the middle of one of their best seasons in years, has brought Hwang's latest, Chinglish, to thier latest production.
Chinglish is a play by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang. It is a comedy about an American businessman desperate to launch a new enterprise in China, which opened on Broadway October 2011 for a short run through January 2012.
Like with M. Butterfly, Chinglish has international intrigue and deception, and is operatic but is more of a comedy. Like Opera, it is 40% Subtitled and the translations alone is what makes the play funny.
An American businessman, Daniel Cavanaugh (the Fab, Evan Whitfield) arrives in a bustling Chinese province looking to score a lucrative contract for his family’s sign-making firm. He soon finds that the complexities of such a venture far outstrip the expected differences in language, customs and manners – and calls into questions even the most basic assumptions of human conduct.
