Pacific rim shot: Comic 'Chinglish' hits Broadway

NEW YORK — David Henry Hwang's direct-from-Chicago comedy "Chinglish" arrives on Broadway amid a crowded fall for new American plays. This arresting and amusing riff on the innumerable translation problems — of language, culture, love — that result when Westerners try to make overtures across the Pacific has broadened (and tensed up) on the eastward migration of director Leigh Silverman's production. But "Chinglish" remains a fascinating comic bookend to "M. Butterfly," the more serious and softer-gauzed 1988 play that launched the career of America's foremost dramatic chronicler of East-West relations.

Chris Jones

October 27, 2011