Four work colleagues gather for their monthly affinity group at an upscale Manhattan Chinese restaurant. Not colleagues, exactly, but a group of employees at Friedman Wallace, “NYC’s finest investment bank north of 14th Street,” with shared Chinese heritage: Ellin (born Ailin), a managing director; Phyllis, the former mentor she has replaced and who has been kicked upstairs; Katie, an up-and-coming executive-in-training; and Iris, a low-level and relatively non-assimilated assistant still angling for a green card. (Can it be that at a major New York investment bank, circa 2019, there are only four, disparate Chinese-American women? Disparate they are, described by one of the characters as “empress, princess, dowager and maid.”)
Alex Lin’s Chinese Republicans, a Roundabout production at the Laura Pels, starts out as an enjoyable and often quite funny comedy, before devolving into something more brutally dangerous (and often quite funny). Let that burnished red restaurant set which greets you be the first clue: this group is as treacherously collegial, and just as ill-mannered, as David Mamet’s real-estate men selling plots over at that Glengarry Glen Ross development. With the sort of off-color language you used to hear, on stage anyway, only in Mamet plays.
Lin demonstrates that she is a talented writer, whipping up plot and characters into a series of frenzies. It all adds up to an entertaining comedy, with sparks of laughter and even a nightmarish Mandarin gameshow. What it doesn’t add up to, alas, is a compelling piece of theatre. The playwright aims arrows in many directions: the glass ceiling, sexual abuse, loveless marriage, the sacrifice of children for career, immigrant battering, intra-racial badgering (as in which Chinese characters are really Chinese and which aren’t Chinese enough), and more. Harvey Weinstein even makes a cameo, surprisingly but—in the context of the play—inevitably.
All these arrows, though—even those which are suitably venom-dipped—tend to be scattershot. You might well wonder, as Lin launches her next attack, just where is she aiming? And what happened to the plotline we were following three minutes ago? There is no reason to compare one play to another, but the Roundabout’s new play series at the Pels recently brought us Bess Wohl’s Liberation. Chinese Republicans addresses some of the very same issues, yes; but Wohl’s writing and plotting were laser-sharp, building to a compelling and emotionally gripping conclusion. Chinese Republicans has the opposite effect. It is unclear, when the lights black out after a rapid 90 minutes, just what Lin is trying to say. It’s tough to be a woman in corporate America, yes; it’s tough to be an ethnic minority even in New York; or maybe that in the world of high finance, your mentor and your protégé are likely as not to stab you in the back in the next scene.
Anna Zavelson, memorable as Young Allie in The Notebook and as Clara in the Encores Light in the Piazza, is equally effective here as Katie, the ambitious young executive done in by a duplicitous boyfriend who steals her promotion. (Oh yes, that’s another one of the plot lines.) Jodi Long, too, is impressive handling the varied nuances of the over-the-hill Phyllis (“the first Asian woman to be managing director in the entire city”). Those who like to peruse the “Who’s Who in the Cast” pages will read that Long was the first Asian-American to win an acting Emmy (for Netflix’s Dash & Lily); some of us will be intrigued to learn that she made her Broadway debut at seven in one of those fabled flop musicals, the 1962 Nowhere to Go but Up, and what’s more appeared in Sondheim’s most negligible effort, Getting Away with Murder. Jennifer Ikeda is less assured as Ellin, although that might be due in part to the confused character strands.
Director Chay Yew moves the cast—which also includes Jully Lee as the least American of the group, and a most amusing Ben Langhorst as a stereotypical gay New York waiter—briskly through its paces. There is little evidence, though, of the director helping edit or guide the playwright. Nor is the cumbersome physical production of much help (other than Wilson Chin’s restaurant set, which is swell.)
The playwright’s most promising comedic idea doesn’t pan out, either. Specifically, the notion presented by the title, Chinese Republicans. Sounds intriguing, no? But no. One of those scattered plot lines has a disgruntled employee quitting, discovering the works of Marx and Engels, lauding Teddy Roosevelt, and going on strike wearing a Ronald Reagan t-shirt. And then Lin and her characters and her play move on to something else.
Chinese Republicans opened February 26, 2026, at the Laura Pels Theatre and runs through April 5. Tickets and information: roundabouttheatre.org
