We wanted to like this. The story, about a medical scandal and whistle-blowing, set in rural China in 1992, sounded right up our street.
Playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig makes a compelling case for her play here…
…but we found the play itself stilted in style, the characters one-dimensional and the story rather too unsubtly obvious.
Chinese theatre perhaps has some of the above characteristics embedded in its culture, but Janie and I are familiar enough with China – we’ve been going there on and off since 1993 for goodness sake – we just felt that this play missed many opportunities to make its points more thoughtfully.
We felt that a talented cast was doing its best with a lengthy wooden script, so try as we might we couldn’t muster the desire to return for 75-80 minutes more after the interval.
A rare miss from the Hampstead these days, although we have noticed a sense of “playing it safe” creeping in to the upstairs scheduling; hence we’re booking less up there. Our next visit will be downstairs.
Here is a link to the Hampstead’s resources on this play/production.
It’s had decent reviews – this link should find them for you.