The Chinese Lady Comes to Portland for Tea and More

Bern Tan and Barbie Wu

 

By Tina Arth

Among the many reasons to love the gradual resurgence of live theater this fall, perhaps the best is the focus on smaller-cast, lesser-known works that might have been overlooked in a sea of better-known audience magnets. Nowhere is this principle illustrated more elegantly than in Artists Repertory Theatre’s current production of Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady.  Director Lava Alapai’s deft touch and her superb two-person cast deliver a 75-minute ride of gentle comedy and bitingly current cultural commentary that leaves the audience thoroughly entertained, edified, and shaken by closing curtain.

 

The play, which is based on a true story, tells the tale of Afong Moy, allegedly the first Chinese woman to set foot on U.S. soil. In 1834, at the age of fourteen, she was sent by her family to some importers of exotic goods in the United States, where she was put on display as a curiosity for white people. What was to have been a two-year commitment turns into nearly five decades of “performing” by sitting in a stylized “Chinese” room while demonstrating how she eats, what she wears, and (as each show’s grand finale) how she walks with her tiny bound feet. She initially speaks no English, and is accompanied throughout by her translator, Atung, whom she jokingly describes as irrelevant although he is her only conduit between Chinese and American culture and language. After several decades possession is transferred to P. T. Barnum as a sideshow, but her allure lessens as she ages, and when she is 62 Barnum imports another young Chinese girl in her place. Afong’s original goal was to foster understanding between two very different cultures, but she gradually realizes that she is just being used as a tool of imperialist exploitation – in one particularly telling sequence, she dispassionately describes the process of foot-binding, declaring that she does not believe it is a terrible custom – then adds her zinger: that some Western traditions, such as corsets and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, are at least as barbaric.

 

Barbie Wu’s “Afong” is nothing short of phenomenal – alternately innocent, sly, witty, and ultimately enraged as the decades wear on, Afong learns about the brutal treatment of Asians in America, and comes to understand the role she plays. With only subtle changes in her hair and clothing, she uses her voice and body to transform herself from early adolescence to old age. Some of Wu’s best moments are those with Bern Tan (“Atung”).  Most of their interactions are indirect, and often involve only body language – rolling eyes, a toss of the head or a sarcastic smile that conveys worlds about the strange relationship between the pair. Tan is particularly funny in the scene where he portrays both himself and Andrew Jackson, as he switches from his own carefully modulated voice and restrained body to Jackson’s loud and obscenely vulgar persona.

 

Given the recent resurgence of anti-Asian sentiment around the United States, the time could not be better for this evocative exploration of our nation’s ongoing, troubled relationship with Asian immigrants.  From set to costumes to lighting, The Chinese Lady is a physically gorgeous show that will not leave its audience unchanged.

 

Artists Repertory Theatre’s The Chinese Lady is playing in the Ellyn Bye Studio at Portland Center Stage with performances 7:30 p.m. Wednesday – Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday – Sunday through November 14^th.