THE PLAY

David Henry Hwang won three Obies and the Tony Award for Best Play with popular scripts like M. Butterfly and FOB. Now he’s back with a canny comedy of cross-cultural errors. In Chinglish, an American businessman heads to Asia to score a lucrative contract for his family’s firm—but the deal isn’t the only thing getting lost in translation when he collides with a Communist minister, a bumbling consultant and a suspiciously sexy bureaucrat. Two-time Obie-winner Leigh Silverman returns to Berkeley Rep to stage the twists in a terrific play she took to Broadway. Love is on the line, and laughter fills the ledger in Chinglish.

Please note: Chinglish includes brief strobe effects and smoking. If you have questions about the show’s content, please contact the box office.

THE BUZZ

“Chinglish is sexy, fun and hilarious!”—New York Magazine

“Hilarious…This well-made comedy takes a poignant view of the profound isolation and terrible vulnerability of people who are lost without their native language.”—Variety

“One of the funniest plays in memory…There’s sex, heartache, even a bit of song and dance…Chinglish manages the neat trick of being about issues, yet populated with real humans while consistently funny. I haven’t heard an audience laugh that much in years.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Thrilling…Hwang has built a bilingual farce about mistranslation that explores the cultural differences between China and America using two languages, and then layered a love story on top of it to illustrate the divide…The result is a thoughtful, funny and poignant piece.”—Associated Press

“One of the three best plays of the year!”—Time Magazine

“China has become very interested in Broadway-style shows. And I’m the only even nominally Chinese person who’s ever written a Broadway show so I started to be called over for a lot of different meetings. And I think that Chinglish the play comes out of my trying to deal with what it means to do business in China, and the things I understood, and the things I didn’t understand.”—David Henry Hwang