Review of Chinese Republicans at Roundabout Theatre Company

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I used to live in New York City when I went to college, as I attended the Fashion Institute of Technology for my undergraduate degrees, but when I left the city because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never really returned, I knew that I was regretting my time in college not taking advantage of student deals for Broadway and Off-Broadway productions.

Granted, I had never been exposed to that kind of environment, or theatre at all, so when I started working in New York theatre and spent some time in that world, I jumped back into it. This blog has been a way to document my journey as a theatre lover and watcher, especially considering I don’t like to do short-form video. Written criticism has always been my thing more.

I was headed back up to New York for a weekend of theater, and one of the shows that caught my eye was Chinese Republicans. I tend to like the work that Roundabout does, and while I do usually participate in Hiptix when I get the chance, I thought that I could swing a full-price orchestra ticket for $49. I had a nice little aisle seat, and my friend who joined me got a Hiptix seat.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

For a young 24-year-old at a financial institute in New York, she learns from her mentors how to back away from the systems already in place.

This play opens in a New York City Chinese restaurant in the middle of a lunch break. Four Chinese-American women, although whether they would define themselves or not is up for debate, are gathering here. All four work at the same elite financial institute in New York, but they have different backgrounds. Iris is a Chinese immigrant; Phyllis is the first Asian/Asian-American woman to be managing director in the city at such a place; Ellen desperately wants to make partner but keeps failing.

The synopsis of the play centers around Katie, who is 24 and wide eyed for the potential she has at the company. Ellen is her mentor and superior at the company, and she’s the one who keeps inviting her to these dinners. At the beginning, we see how the women at the table lean conservative for their own ways.

For Phyllis, it was a way to survive and keep going. It was all she knew back then, which made her tough as nails. If she wasn’t tough, she wouldn’t have survived at this company. We see later on how her character goes beyond the expectations set upon her at the beginning of the play.

Katie is being considered for a new position, which sparks her desire to learn Mandarin. More estranged from the Asian side of her heritage, she is an anomaly in the group, but Iris becomes resentful as she is a native Mandarin speaker and the only one from China. She was not considered for the role at all.

For Ellen, though, she’s willing to erase everything Asian about herself, even if it means abandoning the group and their morals, in order to move up the ladder. This puts her at odds with Katie, who, with her impressionistic youth and takes on the world, begins to see things much more differently than her mentor.

All of this is played with comedic beats and timing quite well. I didn’t know what to really expect with this play going into it beyond the basic synopsis, but I laughed more than I thought I would. While I looked around I did notice a lot of Asian audience members (and of course we solely can’t base this off of a visual sense—I know that!), I always find it interesting to see who laughs at what during these kinds of shows.

Some serious moments people who weren’t Asian were laughing and I did feel kind of awkward there. This is something I felt when I saw A Strange Loop—there were some scenes depicting very striking racism in that production people who weren’t POC were laughing at, which I thought was telling and horrifying in some ways. While it wasn’t as extreme in this show, it did have me side eyeing some people a little bit.

Overall Thoughts

I thought that this production took its time to find its footing in the beginning, but once it did we were set. I expected the entire play to take place in the Chinese restaurant, but it was a nice surprise when the set began to rotate and we could get different visuals and sense of time/place.

I feel like I was seeing some negative commentary around this show before I got into it, but I actually really enjoyed it. My friend also told me that she enjoyed it more than she was expecting. As people who were about the same age as Katie, I think we could really understand her struggle and what she was going through in the moment.

This isn’t a perfect play (but what play really is), but I think it has a lot of heart. I hope it continues to be produced elsewhere for more people to see. I say if you get the chance to see it, give it a chance! You might be pleasantly surprised.

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