Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
“This is a performance. My entire life is a performance,” states 14-year-old Afong Moy, the newly arrived Chinese immigrant to America at the start of Lloyd Suh’s brilliantly written play, The Chinese Lady. And what a superbly acted “performance” within a brilliantly staged production under the detailed direction of May Adrales.
Afong Moy is considered to be the first female Chinese immigrant, only to involuntarily become a sideshow fixture in museums and carnivals, presenting a misappropriated Western vision of Chinese “identity.” In 1834, visitors paid 25 cents (10 cents for children) to see her in her “room”—more like a cage—as the years pass and the visitors stare in wonder (the men sometimes with bad intent).
The stereotypes of those times are firmly in place: here is Afong Moy in a shiny silken kimono, eating shrimp and rice out of a bowl with—what else?—chopsticks. The high point of the viewing is Afong Moy standing up and walking around her room on her tiny bound feet (“I have noticed that my feet are a constant source of fascination,” she muses). She is dutifully prompted—and served—by her manservant and translator Atung, who reminds Afong of her “role” as he plays his.
The Chinese Lady is the kind of exhilarating theater that grabs our attention at the very start, beginning with the striking visual of Collette Pollard’s set. We see an “exotic and foreign” looking box, a kind of shipping container. As the play begins, Atung pulls ropes as we watch it spring to life, opening up to reveal Afong inside the “room” resplendent in red silks and Chinese-looking furniture. It is a triumphant spectacle and perfectly complemented by Melissa Ng’s stunning costume designs, awash in light blues to fiery reds.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
But the heart and soul of The Chinese Lady lies in the stellar performances of its two very fine actors. As Afong Moy, Lisa Helmi Johanson simply astounds and amazes throughout as we watch her age and become more “Westernized” and jaded, knowing there is no way back home to China. She is fascinating to watch—and how perfect is that, given her “role” in this “room.”
Jon Norman Schneider is just as riveting as Atung, his knowing silences filled with deep, unleashed emotion. His is the perfect counterpart to Johanson’s Afong Moy, and his restraint creates a cultural—and at times, sexual—tension that drives home an important point about The Chinese Lady: For all our differences, we are more alike than unlike. Our needs, wants, desires the same as the next person—even those staring back at us in The Chinese Lady.
Through March 24 in Stiemke Studio, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, call 414-224-9490 or visit milwaukeerep.com.
