Talk People Pretend Make Sound Funny Guffaw

Chinglish is closing at week's end on Broadway. I took it in last night. If you've got a night free in NYC before January 29, you should grab a ticket, too. Originally performed in Chicago last year, the play's a disaster-filled comedy about the gaffs, struggles, and mis-interpretations when the West does business with the East. The play's been called "the best American play of the year" by Time Magazine and "sexy, fun, and hilarious" by New York Magazine, but if you've not put your butt into a seat at the Longacre Theatre to see it, you've only got a handful of days left.

What's it about? Specifically around an American sign salesman who goes to China on business, it catalogs his missteps with consultants, failures with interpreters, infatuation with the exoticism of the local culture, and hyperbolic efforts to win over local industry leaders. While I've not done any business in China, I've done plenty in Japan and Singapore, and it's roundly on target.

Outside the plot itself, Chinglish really shines in its staging. The majority of the play is in Chinese, delivered with real time subtitles, projected onto parts of the set in a way similar to shows like Heroes or games like Splinter Cell Conviction have done, so that the words aren't just words laid over an image, but are a stylistic component of the overall aesthetic. The set's very much part of this as well, a series of a half dozen rooms that occupy the very same space. While the play starts out in a governmental office which looks largely real, what appears to be concrete unfolds like a Chinese puzzle box into completely new and elaborate shapes as we move from scene to scene. This otherness and mystery, things not being exactly as they appear and rearranging themselves with such unexpected and entire precision, like the subtitles, add a new dimension to the work, all elements of the production working toward the same atmosphere.

Overall fantastic, why I'm writing this was a moment at the end that personally got me, when the protagonist asks his consultant - a British expat who spent the last eight years in China - why he doesn't just go home. His response was that when he goes back to England and he tries to describe the wonders he's seen, he's met with hollow stares. Talking about my own experiences after a month in Singapore last year, I get that, and I spent the rest of the night with the sights, smells, and flavors of Singapore in my mind.

Chinglish is a bold play. Told largely in a foreign language, with a cast almost exclusively Asian, and around the intricacies of working with foreign cultures and bureaucracies, there's nothing else like Chinglish on Broadway, and after Jan 29, there'll be nothing at all. Tickets start at around $30, so go and get a crash course in international diplomacy with a side of romance, intrigue, and funny dances.