Laughs don’t get lost in translation
Chinglish (Park Theatre) Verdict: On the money ★★★✩✩
CHINA may be the world’s biggest emerging economy, but if you want to know why doing business with the People’s Republic won’t be easy, you should catch this smart new comedy.
Written by Chinese American David Henry Hwang, it’s about an Ohio businessman selling English signs in provincial China.
The city of Guiyang has a brand new international arts centre; and our hero Daniel argues that they don’t want foreign visitors laughing at road signs with embarrassing translations.
Hiring his own interpreter to petition the mayor, his mission staggers through a slalom of social and linguistic faux pas.
Hwang ensures the jokes fall evenly on both sides. The bureaucrats are thrilled to discover that Daniel is a former employee of disgraced U.S. corporation ENRON, and ask if he was a ‘small fish or a big pond’. He falls for the woman brokering his deal and when he pours out his heart in Mandarin, winds up wittering on about slugs, cows and his fifth aunt.
Andrew Keates’s production is a little handicapped by the necessity of surtitle translations, which demand you take your eyes off the action.
Still, the mis-translations are amusing; and Tim McQuillenWright’s design is a neat wall cabinet with foldaway props and furniture for multiple locations.
The acting, too, is enjoyable with Lobo Chan as a venal mayor; Siu-see Hung multi-tasking as sundry surly flunkies; and Duncan Harte playing a grubby British interpreter. Candy Ma fascinates as the local government adviser who warns Daniel that ‘a good honest man respects his wife by lying to her’.
As honest Daniel, Gyuri Sarossy has a genuinely warm stage presence, but is sufficiently out of shape to be interesting and has a likeable flair for believable bemusement.