The title is a mistranslation of a sign in China, which actually should say “Slippery Road Ahead”, this is one of the many signs that have been mistranslated in China. This sets up the premise of the story in David Henry Hwang’s new comedy Ching’lish, about the perils of mistranslation while doing business in China. These mistranslations display the difficulty of understanding more than just the language but the culture of differing nations. The play attempted to demonstrate that the cultural differences between the two great powers, America and China, are still vast.
Gary Wilmes stars as Daniel Cavanaugh who has arrived in a small city in China named Guiyang. Daniel attempts to get the contract to make the signs for the new cultural center in Guiyang. Along the way Wilmes falls in love with Xi Yan, performed by Jennifer Lim, hires a business consultant Peter Timms, acted by Stephen Pucci. Throughout the play the audience slowly discerns that these characters all have their own secret agenda. Like how Xi Yan, only helps Daniel so that she can help her husband’s career. Also, Peter is not really a business consultant but only an English teacher. Even Daniel who appears to be a good man hid the fact that he worked in Enron.
Daniel’s interactions with the natives are the funniest scenes because of the problem they have with communication. The mistranslations during the business meeting scenes were very entertaining, especially with the incompetent translators. I thought that the character development of Xi Yan and Peter allowed me to empathize and comprehend their characters. Timms pretended to be a business consultant because I felt he wanted to feel useful because he was beginning to feel insignificant. Timms says that back when he first came the fact that he could speak Chinese so well amazed the locals but now there are dozens of westerners that speak Chinese. Timms represents the older era of China. His love for old Chinese operas and his story about the past demonstrates how much he misses the past and really feels out of place in the modern era. Hwang uses Timms to illustrate how China has begun to move towards a more modern era by having him run out to be arrested with Minister Cai (Larry Lei Zhang) towards the end of the play. Timms and Zhang’s arrest displays that China has completely moved away from the old age into the modern age.
Xi Yan the vice minister of culture, plays the love interest in this play. Xi Yan helps Cavanaugh get the contract for the signage but her motive was not just for the sake of Cavanaugh. She only helps Cavanaugh because by helping him she helps her husband, a husband whom she has said she does not love. The complexity of the relationship among the Chinese is shown when Xi says that she doesn’t love her husband but still helps him to get a promotion. Although she appeals to Cavanaugh saying that the affair part was for her, Xi’s other actions make it hard to believe her. I think that she cannot be believed because her other actions lead me to believe that she is a liar and would do anything to help her husband.
It seems to me that director Leigh Silverman has encouraged her actors to emphasize their emotions through body language and facial expressions. This could be because a large part of this play is in mandarin. In the scene with prosecutor Li (Angela Lin) and Judge Xu Geming (Johnny Wu) when Daniel confesses that he uses to work for Enron, Li and Xu are delighted. During this scene the expressions of prosecutor Li and judge Xu seemed overtly stressed, especially some of their laughing.
David Korin’s revolving sets was very nice touch because they transformed quickly. This set design really gave a feeling of a full city with offices, restaurants, and hotels. The revolving set is sometimes a little confusing with the set changing and actors running across the set. This goes hand in hand with the play, where the stark differences between the cultures that are shown and sometimes the troublesome problems of communicating. David Henry Hwang does a great job with Ching’lish, which is a very funny play but also has real depth to it.
